


Changes (B Side)

by Eligh



Category: Changes - Jim Butcher, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Action/Adventure, M/M, Magic, Resolved Sexual Tension?, Serious Spoilers for the Dresden Files, The Dresden Files AU, Unresolved Sexual Tension, cursed!Phil, wizard!Clint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4687253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eligh/pseuds/Eligh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two hundred years ago, a young wizard made a choice that tore his lover from his arms and then started a war with the Red Court vampires. But come hell or high water, Clint's going to fix it--fix Phil--and fuck anyone who gets in his way, including himself. He'll sell his soul for a chance to make it right. </p>
<p>Or: Magic, and a story that happens concurrently with Jim Butcher's <i>Changes</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changes (B Side)

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any plans to read _Changes_ and have not yet, I would highly suggest reading that first and then coming back to this, because I spoil the shit out of the penultimate part of that book. I would also suggest at least having a passing familiarity with the Dresden Files books to read this at all, because there will be a lot that doesn't make sense if you don't know what's going on there. 
> 
> This took me forever to write. It just kept getting longer, idek. Enjoy!   
> ~

“Crap crap crap crap,” Clint pants. He’s dodging through the tangle of trees that make up this mess of forest somewhere in Appalachia, his bow slung over his shoulder, his fingers raw from firing the damn thing. The debris covering the forest floor shifts under his feet as he sticks one hand out and grabs a moss-covered trunk of a spindly tree, using it as leverage to quickly change direction. A few more steps and he splashes over a briskly moving stream, which would be nice if the thing chasing him was any sort of monster that would be slowed down by moving water’s ability to ground out magic.    

His pursuer roars from about fifty yards behind him, producing a noise that manages to combine both ‘meaty’ and ‘moist’ into new soaring heights of utter revulsion. Clint shudders even as he picks up speed and unslings his bow from his shoulder without turning to look. Futzin’ rawheads. They’re a magic sort of creature that steals parts from animals (or whatever’s available and, uh, _fresh_ ) to build themselves a makeshift body, and they’ve universally developed a hankering for flesh. Clint thought they were creepy the first time he ran into one of ‘em, and his opinion hasn’t improved in the last couple hundred years.

There’s a clearing twenty yards ahead. It’s as good a place as any to make his stand, ‘cause he sure as hell can’t keep this pace up for much longer.

He skids to a halt in the center of the clearing, sliding a couple feet on the forest detritus before righting himself and planting his feet. He takes a breath and gathers his will, using his rune-carved bow to focus the energy he’s drawing out into a bolt of purple power. He aims between the trunks of two sagging trees and lets the world still around him.

The rawhead delivers, exploding from the trees and into the clearing, gouging deep muddy tears in the forest floor, graceful exactly like an earthquake isn’t, a flurry of quickly-moving scavenged meat. Some of its limbs are still dripping, bits of viscera sloughing off its amalgamation of a body, and the smell, man… well. It’s distinctive.

“Fuck!” Clint shouts, because he’s terrified, thanks, but he still gets off four bolts before a rotting claw’s slamming into his chest and throwing him fifty feet across the clearing. He barely gets up a shield spell before he hits a tree and collapses, still winded despite the protection. The spell flickers out as he shakes his head, but he isn’t given much time to recover.

The forest floor shakes as the rawhead bulldozes toward him, but he manages to get his bow up over his head in time to focus his will again into a shielding spell, snarling out the garbled Romani that serve as his words of power as the rawhead brings down its fist. He’s hammered a foot into the soft ground, little landslides of dirt and mud raining down on his legs, but the shield spell disperses the force enough that he’s pretty sure the bones in his arms only bruise instead of break.

He shouts for wind—a specialty of his—out of pure reflex, dropping his shields and rolling even as he lashes out the spell. A blast of unseasonably frigid air whips through the clearing in a gale and knocks the rawhead back a step or two. It’s enough for a breath and a half, but then before he even think of his next move, the damn thing extends one putrid arm and knocks Clint’s bow from his hand. It tumbles once, twice, then disappears in the tall grass of the clearing, and, and, shit. Clint’s out of ideas.

He’s exhausted, is the thing; he’s been fighting for hours just to get out of the Nevernever, and hadn’t figured 1) on the world’s creepiest pseudo-zombie following him through the Ways, and 2) that his supposed contact that the Council had promised him wouldn’t freaking _be here_ for backup.

So Clint lets out a whimper and shuffles away on his ass, his feet pushing up loam and moss and sticks as he tries to get away, but the rawhead’s too quick for him and snaps out a claw, closing it around one leg. Clint can’t help it; he screams as the too-warm flesh latches onto his calf and digs in.

He’s out of options.

Fire spells haven’t been his go-to in decades, not since he lost his control of them all those years ago, so he’s out of practice. It’s compounded by that fact that he’s spent who-knows how much real time on the Winter side of the Nevernever, but he’s a damn wizard and any spell slinger worth their salt can channel heat. It’s a last ditch panic of a dying man, but Clint gathers his thoughts into a mangled demand for a blaze, his half-screaming brain fighting against traumatic scar tissue and figuring that self-immolation will work in a pinch because at least he’ll take Ugly out with him. Though wouldn’t that just be perfect? First time he steps onto the mortal plane in twenty years and he’s dead before he’s able to get a beer. Fucking _figures_.

Without the benefit of his bow to focus his will—so sue him; he’s always been scattered, and he _needs_ the focus—he’s fucked, and his hands are just starting to warm uncomfortably when a high-pitched whistling cuts through his shock and a boulder-sized hole appears in the rawhead’s chest. The explosion that follows a moment later echoes briefly through the hills before it’s swallowed by the forest.

The rawhead freezes and looks down—the hole in its chest is smoking slightly—and lets go of Clint’s leg. “ _Ignis_ ,” he growls then, furious through the pain of what’s probably at least a cracked fibula, and the fucking thing goes up like a roman candle even as his hands blister.

 

The thing roars in pain and fury before it drops like a particularly squishy rock, and Clint forces himself to scoot backward and away from the immediate heat before he drops his head down on the soggy earth and takes a deep breath. A moment later, who else but Phil-fucking-Coulson appears in his line of sight, the black tattoos that curl in angry swirls up his cheek and down his neck only to disappear under his suit collar, already fading. He’s holding an empty rocket launcher slung over one shoulder because of course he is, has Clint’s bow in his other hand because of _course_ he does, and he’s smiling very slightly, because _of. course. he. is_. Dick.

“Worried, Phil?” Clint asks, pushing down the surge of adrenaline that always comes with seeing Phil (though it’s more pointed, today, what with the mission and all) as he tucks his singed hands close to his chest. He’s flippant because he’s a shit and Phil knows it, but also because Phil’s spelled tats wouldn’t show up unless he was experiencing real-boy emotions and so Clint wants— _needs_ —to diffuse the tension. They both know that this confrontation with the rawhead was too close.

“Don’t be a child,” Phil sniffs, so that’s all right. “And the utter incineration seems a touch overkill.”

Clint sits up, gesturing to the smoking pile of unmentionables that’re disintegrating quickly into ectoplasm and seeping into the ground. “That fucking thing—”

“Its master will be annoyed,” Phil says over him.

Clint glowers. “Kazimierczak can suck my dick. He’s a douche with a grudge. Just because I won’t join him in his axis of evil or whatever.” He flaps a hand, unconcerned with the fact that he’s got one of the magicking world’s biggest hitters on his ass. Nothing new about that; Kazi’s been gunning for him for years, even if the attempts on Clint’s life have maybe increased aggressively over the past decade or so.

“Big words,” Phil murmurs as he drops to squat at Clint’s side, using the empty launcher as a crutch. He’s got the sort of expression that means he’s fighting down an inappropriate smile, though, and Clint grins at him. “Can you stand?” Phil asks.

The grin turns to a grimace as Clint holds out one blistered hand. Phil stands smoothly before grabbing his elbow instead, levering him up gamely, and Clint’s able to take a couple limping steps without his leg buckling. It hurts like a mother, but he reevaluates his self-diagnoses into just a probable sprain on top of the contusions from the rawhead’s claws. He’s had worse. “Pretty sure it’s not broken…”

“ _Hawkeye_ ,” Phil breathes, aggravated. Clint shoots him a rueful smile.

“It wouldn’t have been a big deal if my backup had been here.”

Something on Phil’s face closes down, and he looks… embarrassed? No, no way. “Sorry,” he says. “I was delayed.”

Clint blinks. “Wait, what? _You_ were my backup? I thought you were just stalking me again.”

Phil shrugs, letting the ‘stalking’ accusation slide because they both know he does it. “The Merlin contacted the Fellowship directly. Apparently he wants you to have a bodyguard while you’re, ah, state-side, and I’m the best creature for it.”

Clint’s silent for a moment. The implications of assigning Phil to him, right now of all times, are worrying. Maybe the Merlin suspects something?  He shakes his head minutely, pushing the thought aside before declaring, “Well, that’s unusually cruel of the White Council.” Let Phil think what he will. Besides, there’s no point beating around the bush re: their past. Time doesn’t heal wounds, it just lets them fester.

Phil sighs and reshoulders the rocket launcher. “Cruel, yes. Unusual, no.”

Clint can’t argue there. He swears he Merlin’s a fucking sadist.

~

They take their time slogging through the forest. Clint doesn’t really have a choice given the state of his leg, and he’s leaning heavily on Phil’s shoulder by the time they make it out to wherever Phil’s leading them. Phil barely appears to notice the burden, which is par for the course, but Clint’s sweating and swearing under his breath ten minutes into their hike.

Their destination turns out to be yet another clearing perhaps half an hour away from the one containing the quickly-disintegrating remains of the rawhead, and a mud-flecked jeep that’s turned a splotchy rust-red and grey with age.

Phil tosses the launcher in the back compartment carelessly before turning to Clint, who is balancing gingerly with one hand on the side of the vehicle. “Hospital?” Phil asks before opening the passenger door and gesturing magnanimously for Clint to hop in. Hop, right.

“Nah,” Clint sighs with a shake of his head as he limps forward. “I’ve been spending so much time in the Nevernever, I probably can’t walk within fifty feet of an ER without blowing out something vital.” He grins through the pain. “Phenomenal comic power,” he intones dramatically, because he keeps up on pop culture. “ _Aladdin_ ’s still relevant, right? What year is it?”

Phil ignores his idiocy—which is probably a good call, all things considered—and instead tsks and walks around the front of the jeep. He opens the driver’s door, digs around a moment, and then tosses Clint a length of cloth. Clint ties it sloppily around his bleeding leg, not bothering to get under his ruined pants-leg, just cinching it down tight. It’ll do for now. Phil watches him, separated pointedly from across the jeep, his sharp eyes taking in Clint’s jerky movements. He doesn’t offer to help. Whatever, Clint wouldn’t have let him, anyway, as it’s probably not a great idea to let Phil mess with fresh blood. Temptation, and all that.

That chore accomplished, Phil leans over again and unearths a squat-looking heavy-duty phone from under the seat. It’s got a touchscreen in place of a keypad, which is new. Maybe more time’s passed than Clint had realized.

“Wizards and your intolerance of the electrical,” Phil says, amusement threading through the disapproval and worry that he’s not doing a great job hiding. “Hold on, then.” He taps what is probably a code or a number into the phone, lets the call ring through twice, and goes to hang up. He doesn’t quite make it, as the phone succumbs to Clint’s mere presence and lets out a pitiful beep before starting to smoke around the edges.

“Aw, phone,” Clint mutters. Phil shoots him a tired look and Clint ducks his head. “Sorry.”

There’s a second of silence as Phil runs a hand over his face, exasperated, and for a moment he’s the man Clint loved—whom he knew better than his own thoughts. It’s weird, Clint thinks: peripherally, Phil still looks every inch the twenty-year-old he was when he was turned, except that he’s sadder, and less expressive, and his eyes show every day of his two-hundred-some years.

Clint’s largely unchanged, too, but that’s thanks to extended time spent in Natasha’s pocket of the Nevernever. The faerie world’s time moves at a different pace than the mortal realm, and what’s been eighty years or so on and off for Clint has been much longer back home. Hell, he still looks like he’s in his late thirties, and okay, wizards age slower than mortals, but not that slow.

“Who’d you call?” he settles for asking, something relevant to both their interests, and probably safely non-confrontational.

“Jasper,” Phil tells him, and then watches impassively as Clint struggles up and into the passenger seat of the jeep. “A member of the Fellowship. My partner.” He glances over at Clint—presumably to make sure he hasn’t strained something—and then swings up to sit in the driver’s seat. “So,” he begins, changing the topic, “the mission parameters weren’t exactly clear.”  He sounds vaguely accusatory, and Clint wonders how long it’s been since Phil wasn’t the one with all the answers.

Years, probably. Decades. So aw, hell, he’ll take pity on the poor guy. As he shuffles himself into a semblance of a comfortable position, he affects a ponderous expression and says, “I’ve been tasked with retrieving an artifact. I’ve been assured that it’s a great honor.”

“An artifact,” Phil repeats, ignoring the sarcasm. There’s a moment of silence that Clint pointedly doesn’t fill, instead expertly hiding his amusement behind his killer poker face. He knows Phil’s tricks. Finally, Phil huffs. “Are you honestly not going to tell me what it is that we’re supposed to be chasing?”

Clint screws his face up mock-apologetically. “It’s delicate.”

Phil’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Clinton.”

Clint snorts in amusement and waves a hand in Phil’s direction. He’s just fucking with him, but it’s just too easy. Adrenaline’s making him punchy, and despite some… trepidation… it’s _good_ to see him. “Alright, alright, you big baby.” He leans back in the seat and watches Phil shake his head and turn over the engine.

Once they’re moving, Clint takes a breath. “It’s an Unraveling spell. Or,” he quotes, “‘ _a physical manifestation of forces beyond your comprehension, Wizard Barton_.’ Something crazy powerful, it, uh, unwrites enchantments, curses, those sorts of things. It’s basically a resent button, and the Merlin wants it as a backup for all the shit that’s going down with the Red Court right now. All the cluster in—I guess Mexico—and that Dresden kid.” He sniffs. “I’ve been told I have, I dunno, three days or so? Apparently things are coming to a head.”

“What sort of shape does it take?” Phil asks, his expression considering. “If you’re stealing it, I’m assuming it’s something physical, so, is it guarded? Will the rocket launcher be enou—never mind, I’ll want more ordinance. We’ll need to make a stop.”

The fact that he says this with a straight face just makes Clint want to kiss him. Phil’d never exactly been a wilting flower, but—not for the first time—Clint concludes that well-considered ferocity looks good on him.

Still. He pushes down his amorous inclinations and smiles a little instead, holding his hands up to frame a space about a foot square. “It’s a… it looks like a tightly-woven net. Or a blanket, a scrap of cloth. Trust me, I’ll know it when I see it. I’ve got a couple leads on where it might be, and that’s why I’m state-side. I need to talk to a guy who can point me in the right direction of someone I’ll need to guide me through the Nevernever, and then we’re probably headed back to the dark side.”

“Right,” Phil agrees easily. Too easily for someone’s who’s always been loath to trust the faeries, but Clint’s not sure what that’s about. “How powerful exactly is this thing?”

Clint considers his answer carefully. As much as he trusts Phil, it wouldn’t do to give him a hint of Clint’s real intent behind the spell. So, vague is the name of the game. “Like I said, it’s an unbinding. Presumably it would work for any sort of undoing of any sort of magic you’d like.”

Phil nods. “Interesting. And what does the Merlin want it for?”

Good question. “Insurance, I guess,” Clint shrugs. The Merlin’s desires didn’t matter, really, because he has no intention of handing over the spell once they’ve found it. And while he’s pretty sure stealing the thing will result in the White Council’s watchdogs, the Wardens, chopping off his head, he’s equally certain that it will be worth it. The ruling council of wizards don’t take challenges to their power very well, and their so-called police force chops first and asks questions second.

But yeah, it’ll be worth it. Clint looks over at Phil, at the easy way he’s sitting in a beat-up jeep, like Clint’s actions almost two hundred years ago didn’t destroy his life. They don’t really talk much anymore—alternately unhealthily stalking one another doesn’t count—because in Clint’s opinion, it’s too painful to be reminded of what they had, and a betrayal like the one Clint committed is a little hard to get over. But Clint’s been hiding in the Nevernever for close to a century in order to make it right, and there’s no way he’ll pass this opportunity up. Even if it means his death.

“Get me to Chicago, okay?” he asks, and Phil raises an eyebrow.

“That’s a bit of a drive.”

Clint shrugs. “I’ll buy you a beer when we get there, make up for it. There’s this guy who brews the best stuff you’ve ever tasted.”

Phil sighs. “Get some sleep, Clint,” he murmurs, and despite everything, he sounds fond. Clint closes his eyes and ignores the swooping feeling in his stomach.

~

Clint jolts awake to the sound of the jeep’s door slamming shut. He glances around; they’re in a nondescript parking lot of what appears to be the seediest motel Phil could possibly find. The parking lot’s asphalt is old enough that it’s basically turned back into dirt, the paint’s peeling off the walls of the sagging row of buildings, and there’s a sign in the window of the office that’s advertising rooms by the hour. Auspicious.

“We’re in Narrows, Virginia,” Phil tells him while Clint blinks sleep out of his eyes. “Nine and a half hours to Chicago.”

Well, that’s too long. Clint yawns and tries to gather his thoughts, mentally counting off the tasks he needs to have done in the next couple days. “We’ll have to take the Ways. Can’t waste that much time driving.”

“That’s dangerous,” Phil says shortly, and rounds the back of the jeep, pulling a bag out of the rear compartment and covering his rocket launcher with a convenient blanket. Clint cranes his neck over his shoulder and stares at him.

“Well, yeah, Phil. Did you think this mission was gonna be all world’s largest balls of twine and mystery houses?” It’s snippier than he’d intended, but his leg and hands hurt and he’s tired and anyway, he’s not wrong.

Phil stares right back, his fingers twining momentarily at the edge of the blanket before he twitches it into place, covering his illegal weaponry. “No. But you’ve got plenty of time, we can—”

“Fuck your ‘no,’” Clint snaps, watching with hard eyes as Phil circles back around to stand outside the passenger door, his movements stiff. “We can sleep here for a couple hours, fine, but then we’ll use the Ways and get our asses to Chicago, talk to my contact, and then go get this fucking thing before everything blows up in our faces. What if they move it? What if they _use_ it? I’m not going to fucking risk that because you wanna take a _road trip_.” He’s aware that he’s gone a little shrill, and that Phil doesn’t understand just how _badly_ Clint needs this spell.

Phil’s visibly clenching his hands. “The Ways are a little congested right now, Clint,” he snaps back, and now they’re glaring at one another, and over the futzin’ magical backroads that provide shortcuts through the mortal world, for stars sakes. Everything’s a fight these days, it seems.

“Dammit, Phil, just, get a room,” Clint says sulkily, his will to fight draining out of him, and turns his glare out the windshield. He’s exhausted.

Phil leaves without another word, while Clint waits in tense silence for close to twenty minutes before Phil reappears with a keycard and an apologetic expression. “Clint,” he says, sounding a little strangled.

“What.” Clint doesn’t look at him, instead concentrating on testing the range of movement he’s got in his blistered hands. Seems his nap only heightened their soreness. Adrenaline crashes suck. But whatever, he should be good. Get some salve, he’ll be great. Salve’s great. Everything’s _great_.

“Come into the room,” Phil says softly. “It’s right here, opens on the parking lot and everything, just—”

“Yeah,” Clint interrupts shortly. He climbs out of the jeep and follows Phil silently into the motel room with no further comment, though he does pause in the doorway to fully take in the sheer absurdity that is the room’s décor. It’s a cramped western-themed double with brown industrial carpet under the beds, complete with a sad cowboy lamp on the scratched dresser jammed between them, and dingy horseshoe-adorned-blankets. There’s a decorative lasso nailed to one wall, and a picture of a herd of cows opposite. He inclines his head and looks to the right, toward the bathroom. Incongruously, it’s covered with floral-pattern pink tiles, and the whole place smells strongly of bleach. “Uh-huh,” he says.

“Shut up, it’s cheap,” Phil tells him. “And relatively clean, so that’s something.”

“I’m just gonna dirty it up,” Clint observes, and masterfully proves his point when the makeshift bandage from the forest gives up all semblance of usefulness in favor of letting the blood from his leg wound start to steadily drip onto the floor. At least the entryway’s covered with vinyl.

Phil minutely double-takes at the small puddle of blood growing at Clint’s feet. “This is not a promising start to this mission,” he says dryly, and then holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Clint melts, whatever aggravation he’d been holding onto evaporating. What else is he going to do? It’s _Phil_ , is the thing, and even when they don’t talk for decades only to break their silence with a fight, he still loves him.

Phil helps Clint into the bathroom and then settles him in the bathtub with his injured leg hanging over one edge, before retreating to grab his bag and the medkit he keeps in it. He pauses for a moment in the bathroom entryway, visibly steeling himself—like Clint had thought, fresh blood’s probably not Phil’s favorite thing.

After that, it’s a dance they’ve done before: Clint loses his jean leg to a pair of sharp scissors, hisses through his teeth when Phil wipes his wound down with disinfectant, goes very still when Phil brings out the needle and thread.

In a nameless motel room in the middle of Virginia, both of them sweaty and still covered in dirt and blood, Phil’s tested control made visible by wispy traces of tattoos appearing and disappearing like smoke on his face, his hands, and with the echoes of their anger at one another and their ancient grievances simmering just under the surface, Phil’s touch is as gentle as it ever was.

“Now your hands,” Phil says once the ordeal with the stitches is over, and Clint presents them willingly.

“S’not that bad,” he mutters. Phil raises an eyebrow and says nothing as he turns Clint’s hands over in his own, running tender pressure down Clint’s blistered skin with his thumbs. The ends of Clint’s fingers are largely unscathed; he starts his fire spells in his palms, in his fists. “I’ll be fine,” he says now, and Phil lets out a breath.

“Yes.” He looks down, digging into his medkit and coming up triumphant with a tube of what’s probably homemade burn cream. It spreads on cool, Phil’s fingers gentle enough that it barely hurts. There’s a lingering tingle afterward that tells Clint the cream’s been spelled, and he can’t even find it in himself to be annoyed at the unauthorized use of someone else’s magic. Phil’s already vacated the bathroom anyway, making himself scarce and packing away the kit.

Clint takes a minute, still sitting in the bathtub, watching his palms as the blisters fade, replaced by shiny new skin that’s stretched tight and itchy. At least the calluses on his fingertips are untouched; replacing them would be a hell of a thing.

“I’ll wrap your leg and then we can take turns in the shower,” Phil says suddenly, and Clint looks up. Phil’s hovering in the doorway to the bathroom, clearly uncomfortable. Clint nods his agreement, and Phil sets silently to work.

Without the necessary concentration of tending to Clint’s wounds, awkwardness settles over the cramped, pink bathroom. Clint fights down a sigh. It’s been like this for so long, he and Phil with no idea what to say to one another unless someone’s dying, or in danger thereof. It’s dumb. They never used to have nothing to say.

“How’ve you been?” Clint asks, a little desperate and unsure he could take a second more of this stilted non-conversation.

“Fine,” Phil says quickly, smoothing down the edges of the taped plastic over the long rows of stitches in Clint’s calf. “You know. Seeing the world, training the occasional recruit, trying new foods, killing vampires. Keeping busy.”

Clint nods. “Sure, sure.”

More silence. Stars, this is torture.

A spider slowly lowers itself down from the bathroom vent, inspects them from down its line, then decides they aren’t worth the effort and disappears back up into the ceiling.

“You?” Phil asks.

“Ah, good,” Clint stammers out. “Good. Natasha’s pretty awesome, you know, for a faerie, let alone a Winter Court affiliated one. I mean, it’s a little chilly at her place, but it, uh. Could be worse.” He sniffs. “Reminds me a little of Moscow in the winter.”

“I’m glad you have her,” Phil tells him, and when Clint looks at him, he’s smiling a little wistfully, slowly securing the tape at the edges of the plastic covering. Phil probably doesn’t have much of anyone, these days. Sure, the Fellowship of Saint Giles tries to give their members a partner, but it’s common for them to work separately and see very little of each other. People who’ve been half-turned into vampires tend to dislike company. It’s a trade-off: extra-human strength, speed, and near-immortality in exchange for utter disintegration of human ties.

It’s hard to make friends when a slip-up could cost them their lives and you your humanity. And when the only thing Phil needs to do to slip would be to take a mouthful of human blood—something he craves like air but fights against every day—Clint’s pretty sure Phil’s inclined to just stay alone.

Phil’s done fussing with the bandage now, and is staring at the edge of the bathtub, a couple inches to the left of where Clint’s leg is still hanging limply. The only thing Clint wants to do is push up from his sprawl and wrap his arms around him. Anything to touch him, dammit, just one more time, even though they’d both agreed a long time ago that staying apart was safer for everyone. No one tests Phil’s limits like Clint. But it’s been so long…

“You could come visit,” Clint says softly, against every ounce of his better judgment. “Phil, you have to know how unbelievably I miss y—”

The shrill noise of the room’s phone ringing interrupts him, and Clint whips his attention toward the thing and away from the stricken look on Phil’s face.

“Does anyone know we’re here?” he asks sharply. Phil shakes his head, frowning, and retreats to answer the phone. Clint listens in as he pushes himself to stand in the tub, methodically stripping off the rest of his mud-and-bloodstained clothes, starting with his shirt and the remnants of his pants.

“Yes?” Phil says. There’s a pause. “No. We’re—” Another pause. “Yes, sir.” It’s a contact from the Fellowship, then. Phil wouldn’t ‘sir’ anyone Clint knows. And Phil’s going on, a hint of ice creeping into his voice. “No offense, but why would you think I’ll tell you that? This line isn’t secure.” Another pause, and now the ice is clear and apparent. “If there’s an issue… no. No. I will be in contact.” And then there’s the sound of a phone slammed down a touch too hard into its cradle.

“Problems?” Clint calls, and drops his boxers. Phil reappears in the doorway, takes one look at Clint’s naked body, and then directs his gaze nonchalantly toward the ceiling. Clint rolls his eyes and pulls the shower curtain.

“Gonzalez,” Phil grumbles. “Technically my superior. Or… it’s not worth the fight right now. He wants to know where we’re going.”

“Nope,” Clint tells him seriously, and flicks on the water. “Bad call.”

“I know,” Phil agrees. There’s a pause. “Clint—”

“I’ll just be a minute,” Clint says hastily. “Leave you all sorts of warm water.” He doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Right.” Phil sounds tired, and a moment later there’s a click as he shuts the door to the bathroom, with himself on the far side of it. Clint rests his head for a moment on the ridiculous flowered tile and takes a deep breath, then shakes his head and unscrews the cap for the hotel’s also overly-floral complimentary shampoo.

~

Clint can’t sleep.

He’s been staring at the ceiling of their darkened room for the past hour, listening to Phil’s slow breathing, and the tick of the clock on the wall, and the low rumble of cars in the parking lot, and the shuffle of the people living their lives in the rooms near theirs.

He _wants_ ; finds himself consumed with it. It’s frustrating, especially considering that there are far more pressing issues he should be thinking about. He needs to sleep, he _knows_ he needs to sleep, he’s probably not going to get a chance for another couple days, but—but _Phil_ is here, and not for the first time Clint wonders if pairing the two of them together was the Merlin’s way of sabotaging this whole thing.

Not that the Merlin would want the mission to fail, because he supposedly wants the damn unraveling spell for himself. It’s faerie magic and unbelievably powerful, and could, hypothetically, help the White Council with the whole clusterfuck they’ve found themselves in with the Red Court.

Clint had been shocked, actually, when the Merlin contacted him, practically begging him to chase the rumors. But if someone wants something found, well. Clint’s your man, despite his questionable allegiance with Winter. It makes sense, sort of.

And the Merlin had no way of knowing that Clint had been listening for news of an unraveling spell like this for years, and had in fact already made headway on the spell’s location. And while he _supposed_ he could have said no to the Merlin’s request, he wouldn’t have. Despite spending most of his life living with faeries, the White Council still holds sway over Clint’s life. He _is_ a wizard, after all, and mostly follows the tenants they’ve laid down. Besides, saying no would cause problems and just make his search more difficult.

In the bed next to his, Phil rolls over and sighs, a gust of air directed to the ceiling. “Why aren’t you sleeping, Clint?”

Of course he’s awake. Clint shuffles onto his side, keeping pressure off his leg, and stares into the darkness. He can just make out the lump that’s Phil, the glint of his eyes in the dark. “I…” He swallows. “I just can’t.”

“Are you worried about how to find this spell of yours?”

Clint shakes his head. This is good, something else to concentrate on besides how close Phil is. “No. I have to talk to someone—a contact. He’s a man of little words, but I know the right things to say, and he’ll know where to find someone else, or will at least point me in the direction where I could start to find them. The second someone, combined with another contact I already have, will be able to get me to the—the one who has the spell.”

“And you know this…”

“I’m just that good,” Clint says, and he finds that he’s smiling. But Phil’s voice, when he answers, is full of gravel.

“You are.”

Clint swallows, a curl of heat unfurling in his groin.

“Phil…”

Phil shifts, the slow slide of his skin under the cheap sheets clear in the quiet of the room. “You said you missed me.”

Clint’s heartbeat kicks up a notch. They’re going to talk about this, then. “I do. I mean, we haven’t seen each other in face to face in ten years, and the last time we were in the same room, we nearly killed each other.”

“That wasn’t on purpose,” Phil demurs, and then huffs out a sheepish laugh. Clint hears him shift again on the bed, restless. “My control’s gotten better.”

This conversation is rapidly pushing Clint in a direction he knows they shouldn’t go. “Last time we were… uh…”

“Together,” Phil supplies.

“Sure, together,” Clint agrees, waving his hand unseen in the dark above his bed. “I ended up with blue balls for days and had to knock you out ‘cause you tried to bite me.”

“Like I said—” Phil’s voice is quiet in the dark; careful. “—my control’s better.”

As previously established, Clint _wants_. But he knows that it’s not a good idea. _Knows_ it. They fall into silence for a few moments, and this time it’s the kind that’s charged instead of uncomfortable.

“Phil?” Clint asks finally. Phil doesn’t say anything, but Clint can feel his attention focus even more sharply toward his side of the room. Clint clears his throat. “Um. You should come over here.”

Phil’s quiet for a long time. Then there’s a rustle of bedclothes, and Phil clicks on the lamp between their beds. He’s shirtless, wearing just a pair of sweatpants that he’d pulled from a duffel in the jeep along with a change of clothes for them both for the morning. He takes a deep breath, sitting on the edge of his own bed.

Clint knows all the scars that litter his chest, and the blue eyes that meet his are hooded. “I’m not sure if you’re serious,” Phil says warily.

Clint’s aware that this is a terrible idea “Careful,” he murmurs. “As long as we’re careful.”

Phil cocks his head, and Clint feels a surge of fear—Phil’s not human anymore, not by any stretch of the imagination. He’s a predator, albeit a carefully-leashed one. “What,” Phil says slowly, “are your plans if I come over?”

“Sleep,” Clint says, about 85% honest. “Just sleep, Phil.” He’s not sure who is trying to convince whom of what, but right now he just wants Phil closer.

Phil looks down, clearly thinking it over. “Just to sleep,” he says finally. “I mean, there’s control and there’s—”

“No, I know,” Clint reassures him quickly. “Just—”

“Yeah,” Phil agrees, and then he’s crossing the short distance between them and sliding under the scratchy comforter that Clint’s got rucked around his waist. Clint breathes out a sigh of relief mixed with contentment, and leans in close; Phil wraps his arms around Clint’s shoulders and rests his lips for a moment in Clint’s hair. “I miss you, too,” he says softly.

Clint doesn’t answer, just rests his head on Phil’s collarbone, breathes in his familiar scent, and closes his eyes.

~

“We’ll have to drive to Charleston,” Clint says the following morning. Phil’s cleaning what can only be described as a hand-cannon at the tiny table that’s shoved up under the room’s window, his face blanked to its usual zeroed expression. Clint’s glaring at a map of the area that he has spread out on one of the beds, and wishing he could risk heading back into the Nevernever to get there. But the presence of the rawhead that had been waiting for him at his extraction point meant he’d need to be especially careful using the Ways. More well-travelled paths would be safer than the ones he’d be able to find nearby.

“I know I can get to Edinburgh from there,” he muses, “and we can get to Chicago from Edinburgh, so, that should work.” It’s still a far more roundabout method than he’d like, but he doesn’t have much else of a choice. “It’ll take probably two, two-and-a-half hours,” he tells Phil, and then taps the map decisively. “Then we’ll talk to Mac, who’ll point me in the direction where I can find an emissary to the Erlking—”

“The Erlking?” Phil interrupts, his gun clattering down onto the speckled Formica tabletop with a touch too much force. He’s showing interest in what Clint’s been talking about for the first time today. “What do you need with that maniac?”

Clint blinks at him, thrown. Shit. He shouldn’t have said that, but now it’s too late. “He’s the one who has the Unraveling.” Phil looks disturbed, and Clint straightens up, crossing his arms defensively. “Issues, Phil?”

Phil shakes his head, but then makes a strangled sort of half-noise. “What—how— _why_ would you think that he’ll give it to you?”

Because Clint has something—someone—he’s planning on offering the wyldfae king, but he’s not going to tell Phil _that_. “I’ll figure it out.”  He shrugs, nonchalant to the extreme. Phil narrows his eyes, but doesn’t comment. Instead, they drop the subject in favor of packing up their meager belongings, making a sweep of the room—Clint double-checks that every drop of blood he’d spilled has been cleaned up, because the last thing he needs is someone tracking him with blood magic—and heading out.

The skies above them are threatening rain, so it’s muggy and humid outside like Clint’s not used to. He wipes a layer of sweat off his upper lip and sighs. “This weather is gross.”

“ _Snow_ is gross,” Phil stresses, but when Clint glances at him, he’s got a twitch of a smile lurking at the edges of his mouth.

Clint laughs and swings up into the jeep, not bothering to fuss with raising up the soft top. If it rains, it rains. “You live in it for enough years, you get used to it.”

“I suppose,” Phil says dubiously, but he’s still got that hinted-at smile, so Clint crosses his arms behind his head and kicks his feet up on the dash. Phil smacks his feet down with an open palm, and the smile grows. Clint’s counting it as a win.

~

They’re listening to Johnny Cash on the jeep’s ancient, scratchy radio—made moreso with every twitch of Clint’s foot—and cruising at a comfortable 70mph down the I-77 when it happens.

One moment, they’re alone on a stretch of interstate. The next, there’s a shimmer of nothingness a hundred yards in front of them, a tear in the fabric of reality.

Clint has enough time to shout “Shit! Phil!” and then they’re through it.

Things happen very quickly after that: a reflexive grab of one’s bow, muttered invective from the driver’s seat, the jerking of the steering wheel. Even with the heightened reflexes that come with Phil’s condition, they’re unable to stop the vehicle in time to avoid the rip in the open air above the road, so next comes the screech of tires as the jeep swings wide, front tread rolling over and digging into the soft dirt alongside the interstate as the back wheels skid them cockeyed on the damp pavement.

They enter the Nevernever sideways, their sturdy jeep overwhelmed with the sudden change in atmosphere and terrain. Smoke starts to billow from under the hood, such a concentration of magic overwhelming even its simple engine as it hits a berm and tips, metal shrieking as it flies into the air. Clint thanks the stars it’s an open-top vehicle as both men execute neat leaps free of the soon-to-be wreck. Phil’s bristling with his gun in hand, and Clint’s already focusing his will into bolts to be fired from his bow. They snap automatically, magnetically, back to back, their faces set, their weapons raised.

Clint’s got only half a second to take in their surroundings, scanning for hostiles, for anything. They’re encircled by a thick, oppressive, ancient forest, and next to them the portal to the world back home cracks and shimmers. It sets an eerie quality to the air, and the light it’s radiating gives the forest the sort of shadows that are sharp enough to cut.

“Now, now,” Natasha chides from her graceful perch on a low branch of the nearest tree. She’s perfectly composed, merely arching one graceful eyebrow as the jeep succumbs to gravity and rolls twice more, passing a mere foot from her seat before coming to a crunching halt against a primeval, arching oak.

Clint takes a breath, goggling and willing his heart rate down. He feels Phil’s heaving side against his back, and doesn’t need to look to see that he’ll have his tattoos out. Natasha, still to all appearances utterly serene, alights from the branch in one graceful movement before flicking her fingers toward the gaping hole that bisects the interstate they’d just been driving down. The portal disappears in a flash of blinding light.

“Hello, boys,” she says, smiling a shark’s smile. There’s a beat of silence, broken only by the soft patter of glass and metal tinkling gently to the ground.

“ _Fuck_ , Natasha!” Clint shouts. Phil huffs out a pained breath, apparently in agreement with that sentiment, and lowers his weapon.

Natasha’s eyebrow levitates up again, but the smile she’s pointing their direction turns more amused. “And here I’d thought my assistance would be appreciated.”

Clint forces down the tight static charge that accompanies readied magic left unleashed and slings his bow over his shoulder. “Not like this! We coulda _died_ , Nat!”

“Hardly,” she scoffs. “If you’d died from such a little accident, I wouldn’t deign to call you my friend.” And with that, she turns on her heel before heading away steadily into thick vegetation. She’s barefoot and dressed in a clinging, nearly sheer blue-white impossibly short mini-dress, her red hair a flame of wild curls swirling around her statuesquely beautiful face. As always, she appears wholly unaffected by the rough, branch-strewn ground she summoned them to, but she’s leaving bloody footprints behind her as she goes. And while Clint’s used to this particular curse, Phil looks down at her retreating path with wide eyes.

Clint scrubs a hand over his face, gathering his wits before he jogs to the ruined jeep, unearthing both his bag and Phil’s, and the rocket launcher. The launcher and one bag he tosses to Phil, who catches them deftly, and then they follow Natasha at speed.

She’s disappeared from sight, but her footprints leave a clear path through the trees, headed north.

“What,” Phil asks, his breath measured as they navigate the tangled forest as quickly as possible, his face worried, “is this?” He inclines his head toward the footprints they’re following. Clint shrugs.

“Natasha and the Winter Queen had a disagreement a couple centuries ago. When she’s on this side of the world, she leaves a mark.” He’s more out of breath than Phil, and his leg’s protesting their pace with sharp stabs every time he puts weight on it. He shifts his bag into a more comfortable spot on his shoulder, fighting to ignore his limp, and adds softly, “She says it’s a mark of the blood in her past. I know she hates it, but she also thinks she deserves it.”

Phil hums understandingly under his breath. If anyone’s going to understand and accept blood in someone’s past, it’s Phil.

They round another huge oak, this one even bigger than the one that ended the life of their jeep, and then there’s Natasha, sitting with her legs crossed at the knee, regal on a fallen log. She somehow makes the rotting wood look like a queen’s throne.

“Stars, woman,” Clint swears, and stops short. Phil settles menacingly at his shoulder, and even though he doesn’t need the backup—he trusts Natasha with his life—Clint appreciates the sentiment. “What are you even playing at?”

“Should you be talking to a faerie like that?” Phil murmurs, leaning close, his lips nearly brushing Clint’s ear. Clint turns and looks at him. He’d forgotten—though Phil and Natasha had at least seen each other before, they’d never really interacted. All Phil’s probably certain about is that Clint takes refuge with her in Winter, but for all Phil knows, it’s less a reciprocal relationship than appearances may make it seem.

Natasha smiles then, wide and easy. “He’s such an ass,” she says, directing her words toward Phil, who blinks, startled. “He’s never shown me any kind of respect.”

“Gotta _earn_ respect,” Clint points out, and steps sideways in favor of slumping against the oak. His leg’s aching; he probably pulled the stitches that Phil spent so much time on last night. He waves his hand between the two of them. “Phil, meet Lady Natasha Romanova, Sidhe of the Winter Court, favored of Mother Winter. Nat—this is Phillip Coulson, of the Fellowship of Saint Giles.”

“And your lover,” Natasha adds with a smirk, while blatantly giving Phil a long up and down look. Clint rolls his eyes but doesn’t correct her. Phil, bless him, just smiles blandly and crosses his arms. Natasha nods approvingly. “It is an honor to finally meet you.”

Phil’s posture relaxes a little. “And you. Clint’s spoken highly of you.”

“As well he should,” Natasha says with another smile. But then her face grows serious. “I apologize for the theatrics earlier.” She inclines her head back through the trees. “But you were driving into a trap.” Clint sits up slightly, though Phil tenses enough for the both of them.

“A trap?” Phil glances over in Clint’s direction, concern etched starkly on his face. “What do you mean?”

Natasha waves their concerns away with an uninterested gesture. “Old grievances. Clint is…” she considers her words for a moment. “Let’s say he has a knack for making enemies. It has nothing to do with your current mission for the wizards.”

Perfect. Clint purses his lips at her news, but then rolls up his pants leg and inspects the wound he’d sustained yesterday. It’s slowly seeping blood from one end of the line of sutures, just like he thought it would be. He makes an annoyed face at the gash before glancing up. “I should probably know who’s trying to kill me, Nat. Just saying.”

“It’s no one you aren’t aware of already,” she prevaricates, standing and crossing to where he’s leaning against the tree. Clint rolls his eyes again; spectacular as his friend is, trust a faerie to never give you a straight answer.

Natasha crouches down, her brow furrowed, and looks at his leg. “Idiot,” she says fondly, and touches gentle fingers to the slice on his calf. There’s a tingle—Clint makes an undignified noise when it progresses into painful itch territory—and then the wound’s scabbed over, healing skin tight and itchy.

“How am I an idiot for coming out on top of a rawhead?” Clint asks her, and then smiles up at Phil, who’s watching them closely with a tight, unhappy look on his face. His tattoos have receded as he’s regained control. All that’s left of them are faint grey shadows on the backs of his hands and in the hollow of his throat, and even those fade completely as Clint watches.

“I wouldn’t say you were on top,” Phil points out mildly, his mask of calm slipping back into place, his face closing off. “I’m pretty sure I saved _someone’s_ ass in the forest back there.” Clint sticks out his tongue at him, while Natasha huffs a quiet laugh and stands.

“Nevermind the rawhead,” she says, and sticks out at hand so Clint can haul himself up.

“Seriously, you apparently have far more important business than an idiot with a grudge,” another voice chimes in. Clint startles hard enough that he drops Nat’s hand and falls over, while Phil’s already spinning, weapon again drawn, though Clint notices that he stays calm enough that he’s got no sign of his tattoos. Natasha just blinks serenely.

“Again! What the _fuck_ , Nat?” Clint spits out. She tilts her head, amused, as another fae appears, this one swinging upside down from one of the upper branches of the tree they’re under. Her dark brown hair’s hanging freely and she’s wearing what looks like a red and black motorcycle jacket and matching leather pants. Her eyes are pure white, and she has intricate red, yellow, and black tattoos around them, giving her face the appearance that she’s wearing a half-face mask.

“Hey,” she says cheerfully. “I’m Jess.”

Clint makes an inarticulate noise of distress. He cannot even deal with this right now—what is even going on? “Who are you?”

“My… friend,” Natasha says, though she sounds a little unsure about the designation.

“That’s right,” Jess agrees, and swings down from the branch, landing on her feet with little effort. “And we heard through the grapevine that you, Clinton Francis Barton, are seeking an audience with the Erlking.”

“An _audience_ ,” Phil says flatly, like he still can’t believe this, and Clint winces and pointedly doesn’t look at him. He nods at Jess instead. This is good, Natasha did well, coming up with another faerie. It’ll cut down on time and keep things moving.

“I am,” Clint agrees. “I do want to see him.”

She smiles widely, and he’s suddenly reminded of… something less pleasant than the image she’s projecting. Something dangerous. A spider, maybe. No wonder she and Nat get along.

“Well,” Jess says, walking over toward the stump Nat had been sitting on and draping herself over it instead. “You need envoys to see this thing through. One from Winter,” she gestures at Nat, who wiggles her fingers at Phil, “and one from Summer.” And here she gives a little wave of her own.

“Ideally you’d have a wyldfae envoy as well,” Natasha muses, one graceful finger resting on her chin, “but the good thing about the wyldfae is that they don’t particularly stand for tradition, so a free agent isn’t strictly necessary to get past the Erlking’s defenses.”

“Defenses?” Phil protests, but he’s soundly ignored. Instead, Clint smiles at the two faeries standing in front of him.

“Well then, I guess I gotta thank you for calling me here,” he says. “You saved me a lot of time and effort.” And then, more warily, he asks both faeries, “What do I owe you for leading me there?”

“You know my terms,” Nat murmurs, and yeah, Clint does. They’ve had this sorted for years. He looks to the Summer fae next.

“A favor,” Jess says simply. “Just one favor. Pretty easy, really.”

Clint considers these terms for a moment, glancing at Phil as he does so. Phil gives a minute shake of his head, and while Clint doesn’t blame him his resistance to that idea—promising a faerie carte blanche would be unbearably idiotic—he really needs admittance to the Erlking’s court for his plan to work.

“I reserve the right to say no to anything you ask of me,” he says finally, and doesn’t miss the way Phil’s grip tightens on his weapon when he speaks. “I won’t do something that goes against my personal morals.”

Jess bows shallowly to him, and honestly, Clint’s not sure if he’s being mocked or not. “As long as a favor is one day fulfilled, I accept your terms.”

Clint’s aware that he’s straying into highly dangerous territory. It’s a good thing, then, that he’s no stranger to great personal peril.

~

Jess and Nat discuss the path best taken for a few brief minutes, and then inform Clint and Phil that it will take a half-day’s walk to reach the Erlking. It’s decided that they’ll camp here for the time being—it’s night in the, the, wherever they are—and then head out in the morning. For now they take a moment to relax, Clint and Natasha sitting close together on the edge of the clearing, their backs supported by yet another oak wider than most rooms.

“We’ll stay mostly in the Nevernever,” Natasha tells him quietly as Phil and Jess bicker at loggerheads about how to set up camp for the night. “Jess and I know several shortcuts, and I’d prefer to keep you in my sights. The price on your head is growing obscenely. You’ve at least three assassins on your trail, though I’m only worried about the one.”

“Yeah,” he says, arching at brow at her. “About that…”

“Red Court fuckery,” she informs him. “Those vampires are really extremely vexing.” She makes a disgruntled face. “Honestly it’s starting to seem that it may be best if they’re simply… wiped away.”

Clint’s second eyebrow joins his first. “You’re, uh, not one to usually advocate for genocide, Nat.”

“No,” she sighs. “No, you’re right. But some of them have somehow got word of your mission, and they have—” she cuts her eyes toward him. “—Clint, they’ve contacted Kazimierczak. He already has a grudge, and now with this added incentive he won’t stop until—”

Clint scoffs, interrupting her. “That clown? Trust me, I know. He’s made a play for me already, remember?” He gestures to his leg, and Natasha’s face sets into a look of extreme displeasure. Clint goes on anyway. “And Phil was there, so it all worked out. I know it was him—he’s the only one besides the Redcap who can control rawheads. And anyway, he’s barely an assassin, he’s a joke, he’s—”

“A powerful dark wizard, who has repeatedly avoided your Council’s attempts to corral him,” Natasha cuts him off sharply. “By the Mother, Clint, do you take nothing seriously?”

Clint glowers right back at her. “I take plenty things seriously,” he snaps back, “but Kazi isn’t one of them. Right now I need to concentrate on getting through the next couple days, and then, if everything goes well, that pancake makeup-wearing maniac won’t be able to touch me.”

“No,” Natasha says tiredly, and looks sad. “No, nothing will touch you again if you get your way.” She looks over at Phil, who’s now watching Jess over a small campfire with a plastered-on smile that doesn’t come close to reaching his eyes. “Does he know?” she asks then, leaning close and lowering her voice even further. Her lips brush his ear and Clint jolts, taken off guard by the casual contact. For all that they’re close, he and Natasha don’t often exchange touches as intimate as this.  

“Know what, Nat?” he sighs, his ire draining. He’s tired, and doesn’t really want to talk about this.

“What you plan to give up for him,” she clarifies, and settles further into her position sitting next to him, wiggling a little. She’d magicked a new outfit out of the ether at some point after they’d met Jess, and now looks immaculate in a black leather catsuit. Clint eyes her and absently wonders if Summer fae are as prone to fabulousness as the Winter ones. Considering that Jess is the only one he’s ever met, he’s not sure. Jess seems to be… a bit of a free spirit.

“No,” Clint tells her. Natasha falls silent then, radiating disapproval until he slouches down, his shoulder brushing hers. He feels the moment the tension leaves her body and she brings up a hand in response, her fingers hesitating for only a moment before threading through his hair and guiding his head down to rest on her shoulder.

“Poor bird,” she murmurs. “Can you think of nothing else? You must have some other options.”

“Phil was half-turned centuries ago,” Clint says tiredly. They’ve been over all this before, but sometimes he needs to remind himself of what he’s caused with his arrogance. “It’s my fault. I was hunting the Red Court, and they took him from me as punishment, changed him into something he should never have had to be. There’s no cure for what they did to him, except _maybe_ this Unraveling spell, and even then it’s no guarantee.” He sighs. “But it’s a chance he wouldn’t get without the spell.”   

Natasha reaches into the pocket of his jeans—she really is being far too easy with his personal space and it’s a little disconcerting—and pulls out a necklace, careful to grasp it by the pendant and not its slender chain. Which is fair enough, as the chain is carefully woven links of iron and silver and bronze, each individual circlet of metal inscribed with miniscule runes—words of power and protection. The pendant is small, just an amber-colored stone set with a simple metal back, but it’s the most important piece of an already important puzzle.

It’s a mark of how much Clint trusts Natasha that she’s even able to touch it; if he thought of her as an enemy, it would burn her skin. He’s spent the last thirty years making this necklace, and it’s perfect, the magic contained within it by far the most powerful he’s ever managed in his long life.

“Do you really suppose your philosopher’s stone will be enough to protect him once the spell’s broken?” she asks. “And more importantly, how are you going to get him to wear it without telling him its purpose?”

“I’mma shove it over his head,” Clint mutters, petulant, though in truth he has no idea how he’s going to get Phil to accept this gift. Its power is clear—if he looks at the necklace with his wizard’s Sight, it glows stronger than the sun. Even Phil, who has no innate magical power of his own other than the vast knowledge he’s accumulated over the years, will be able to see that this is no regular piece of jewelry. 

“He won’t accept your help?”

“He will,” Clint disagrees. “He’s not self-destructive. But he’ll want to know what it is, and I’ll have to explain, which will mean telling him what I’m planning on giving the Erlking.”

Natasha looks down at the ground and hands the necklace back over. “You don’t know if the Erlking will even accept your offer.”

“Oh, yes I do,” Clint says, and grins humorlessly. “I have my contacts. I know how much he resents Winter and Summer and their Knights.”

~

“Tag,” Phil says much later, settling next to Clint on the ground and brushing their shoulders together. “Go get some sleep.”

Clint looks over at him, and then up at the sky. A few hours have passed since Natasha took her leave of him, so he supposes it’s time for a watch change, despite the fact that he’d never actually realized what he was doing could be construed as standing watch. Time gets so wonky in the Nevernever, and he’d been distracted by his thoughts. “I’m not tired.”

Phil hums in agreement and wraps his arms around his knees. He’s still wearing his tie and dress slacks, with his shirt turned up at the elbows, though he’d lost his usual jacket at some point during the past day. The moonlight makes him look softer than what Clint’s used to. Approachable, even, like he hasn’t been in years.

“Why’d you agree to this escort mission?” Clint asks him. He’s curious, you see. It’s just that they haven’t really talked in a decade, and while Clint’s the sort of guy who isn’t going to fall _out_ of love with someone, he’s also the catalyst that screwed Phil over. There’s no reason for Phil to have any sort of loyalty to him, and even though Clint knows they both keep tabs on one another, there’s just no explanation for Phil being as kind as he has been so far.

Phil sends him a sharp glance. “Your Merlin said that this could be dangerous. I don’t like the idea of you being sent into danger with no one to watch your back. It’s one thing when you’re killing time in the Nevernever, but it’s another—” He shakes his head. “This mission is something else.”

“But—” Clint makes a face. “Why, Phil? Why do you—why care?” He knows why _he_ cares about Phil, what he’s willing to sacrifice for him, but why on earth, really, would Phil feel the same way? He doesn’t understand.

Phil stares at him like he’s lost his mind. “Because you’re the most important thing in my life, Clint.” He shakes his head. “Even after so long apart, why would that have changed?”

Clint stares right back, like that hadn’t been a punch to the gut to just hear. “Because it’s my fault that you’re what you are?” he asks incredulously. “I’m the one who left you defenseless for the Reds to take, I abandoned you with the Fellowship, and every time we’ve seen each other since then we usually end up trying to kill each other.”

Phil slumps. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

“What?” Clint bristles. “No I’m not, c’mon—”

“I can’t believe we’ve never talked about this,” Phil interrupts, holding up a finger. “One, it’s not your fault the Reds took me. I left our home that night—after you’d told me not to, may I add—because the family down the road from us needed help birthing their new cow. The Reds took me on the road on my way back.”

“You never told me that,” Clint whispers. Phil shakes his head.

“You never asked. Two—” he raises a second finger “—I would have drained you if you hadn’t brought me to the Fellowship, so you saved my humanity by leaving me with them. I had no control over myself in those early days, and you had no other option.” He reaches out and touches Clint’s face. “I’m grateful.”

“But—”

“Don’t,” Phil warns, and lifts a third finger. “Three, we have tried to kill each other precisely four times. Twice were because _I_ lost control with bloodlust after a fight, once was because _I_ lost control because my blood was up because you’re…” his eyes trail down Clint’s body and back up. “…You. And the last was because you were being _mind-controlled_. None of those things were in any way either of our faults.”

He leans in and touches his lips softly to Clint’s cheek, a bare, dry brush. “I have been like this for one hundred and eighty-two years. And as painful as it is sometimes to not be with you, I can sleep happily knowing that you’re still alive. That you being a wizard means that we both still live in a world with each other in it.” He reaches out and tangles his fingers with Clint’s, and numbly, Clint lets him. He’s not sure what to say. He’s not sure what to _think_.

“If this hadn’t happened,” Phil murmurs, “if the Reds hadn’t tried to punish you by changing me, I would have died over a hundred years ago, Clint. I was just a human.”

“There’s no ‘just’ about you, Phil,” Clint interjects quickly, and Phil allows him that concession with a small smile.

“So do I hate it, sometimes?” he goes on. “Sure, of course I do. I hate that I can’t be by your side, that I can’t kiss you without the venom in my lips drugging you to the point of catatonia, that we can’t make love without a sincere urge on my part to—to, well.” He runs his tongue over his teeth and squeezes Clint’s fingers. “But I love that we can see each other, even if it’s not often. I would have lost you so long ago, otherwise.” He shrugs. “So while it’s far from a blessing, it’s certainly not as much of a curse as you may think.”

“If you could undo it, though,” Clint hazards, “would you?”

“Not if it meant I wouldn’t be here today,” Phil says matter-of-factly. But then he hesitates, uncharacteristically uncertain. “But… if it meant that I’d be able to touch you again?” he murmurs, and then leans in, brushing his lips along the line of Clint’s throat, pausing briefly over his thudding pulse before pulling away. “I would do almost anything.”

~

“Alright! Up and at ‘em!” Jess says with an echoing clap of her hands that causes Clint to wake with a jerk. He flails a little, his hand automatically closing around his bow before he remembers where they are and what he’s doing sleeping on the ground. His heart pounding with unused adrenaline, he sags back against the pile of moss he’s using for a makeshift pillow.

Jess smiles down at him with her odd, milky eyes, and Clint has to blink once or twice before he realizes that she’s actually hanging down by just her legs from a branch overhead. She’s contorted oddly and he spends a moment envying her core muscles, if she can hold herself upside down and backward like that for an extended period of time.

“I’m up,” he grumbles eventually, rolling slightly to the side and putting ginger pressure on his wounded leg. It feels better than it did yesterday, that’s for sure. Natasha’s little trick had worked wonders. Phil shifts at his back, also sitting up, and Clint fights down a surge of happiness when he realizes that Phil must have curled up to sleep behind him once his turn at watch was over.

Natasha is knelt a few feet away, directing a steady flow of ice from the tips of her fingers that’s rapidly crusting over and extinguishing the remains of their campfire. She spares the rest of the party a bare glance before saying, “Hurry up and gather your things. I don’t want to approach the Erlking’s grounds when it’s nearing dark.”

Phil grunts something unintelligible in response to that, but gets up and starts cleaning up camp, a somewhat disgruntled expression on his face. Clint watches him from his spot on the ground; the two of them hadn’t discussed his plans to meet with the king of the wyldfae at any point last night, but judging from Phil’s set expression, he’s not thrilled about Clint’s plan of attack.

To be fair, Clint’s not all that thrilled either, but the Erlking’s the one with the Unraveling, and he needs the damn spell.

“Hey,” he says, catching Phil by the pants leg as he passes close by, their bag in hand. “C’mere a sec.”

Phil crouches down easily enough; the camp’s already cleaned up as well as it needs to be and despite Nat’s insistence on leaving soon, they’ve got a little time. But Clint’s pretty sure he’s looking a little worse for wear, if the worried look Phil’s giving him is any indication.

“What’s wrong?” Phil asks. “Clint, you know you don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, no,” Clint tells him, and forces a smile. It’s not the most honest one he’s ever graced Phil with, but it’ll work in in pinch. “The Merlin’ll be pissed if I don’t deliver, so yeah, I sorta gotta.” Not true. Well—the Merlin will certainly be pissed, but Clint doesn’t really give a fuck about that guy. “I wanted to give you something.”

Phil’s brow creases, but he settles further onto the ground next to Clint, crossing his legs and leaning forward. “What?”

“Just,” Clint says, the most nonchalant motherfucker in the history of casual people doing blasé things, “this thing I made.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pendant; it glitters like a diamond in the early morning light. It’s no exaggeration that he can feel the power pulsing off it.

Phil stares at it. “Clint—”

“It’s just this thing,” Clint says quickly. “I was gonna search you down and give it to you after I finished this mission.” He had actually planned on finding Phil and forcibly shoving the Unraveling down his throat before locking the damn necklace around his neck, but Phil doesn’t need to know that, “but since you’re here and all…”

Phil looks skeptical. “Not that it’s not…”

“It’s, uh, sort of a shield necklace.” Clint grins crookedly. “All the cool wizards have something like it.” Proof of point: he holds up his right arm where he’s wearing what at first look appears to be a shooting guard. And while it doubles at that, sort of—his bow’s really more of a construct; it’s not actually strung with anything other than his will, and the magic he shoots from it isn’t corporeal—the guard’s actually soft, worked leather, with rune-inscribed straps woven closely with fine threads of silver and iron and copper. He mostly uses it to focus his defensive spells and rarely takes it off.

“Yeah,” Phil says carefully. “But you’re a wizard. I’m not. I can’t use…” he touches the guard gently with the tips of his fingers. “Spells are a little wasted on me, Clint.”

Clint shakes his head. “No, I know. This is more of a passive protect-all sorta thing. It’s like a force field.” Which is vaguely true. The metal in the necklace will certainly protect Phil from more mundane threats that may befall someone who stays well on the dangerous side of the supernatural, and the wards Clint’s woven into the thing have good chances to knock back some of the bigger bads, too.

But the real crux of the thing is the pendant, the stone itself. It’ll stop Phil from aging once the Unraveling’s done its work, which is a serious concern. As Phil himself pointed out last night, he’s only human, and he’s been alive far longer than his normal lifespan. And while Clint’s not absolutely sure what’ll happen when he removes the Red’s curse, good chances are that, unaided, Phil would simply age rapidly, wither, and die right before Clint’s eyes.

Fuck that.

“You gotta keep it on,” Clint says gently, and pushes the necklace a little closer to Phil’s hands. “It won’t work if you don’t keep it on.”

“You made it for me?” Phil asks him softly, a little disbelieving.

“Yeah, you big…” Clint takes a deep breath. “C’mon, let me put it on. I gotta say a final spell to activate it once you’re wearing it.” It’s actually a two-in-one; partly an activation spell and partly an unbreaking spell. It’s something Clint’s been working on for months, but it’ll guarantee that the necklace won’t ever fall off. Or be ripped off. Point is, it’ll make it so Phil’s the only person able to remove it once it’s clasped.

(Clint had wanted to make it fully unbreakable, but Natasha had talked him out of it. She’d preached about freedom of choice, the freedom to live by only answering to oneself, and Clint had realized that as little as he may like it, taking the choice to live or die away from Phil—taking something else away from Phil—was unconscionable.)

Phil tilts his head and crooks a smile. “Alright,” he says. He’s clearly humoring Clint at this point, but Clint’ll take it. And when Phil bows his head so Clint can work the clasp at the back of his neck, it’s like a weight’s been lifted.

The chain’s long, and the stone hangs halfway down Phil’s chest when it’s finally on. Clint swallows down his nerves and smiles wobbly at Phil, gathering the pendant in his palms and clasping them tight together. He closes his eyes and centers himself; the spell’s easy enough to say, but magic’s—at least in Clint’s experience—largely about the intent of the thing. He could say the words all day and have them mean nothing, but if he wants, and believes… that’s where the real power lies.

“ _Închide cercul, nu rupe. Răspunde numai pentru a purtătorului dumneavoastră._ ” He murmurs the words quietly, and the stone trapped in his hands lets out a burst of amber light that seeps through his clasped fingers. Phil blinks in surprise, but the corners of Clint’s mouth curl up. Success.

He lets go and the stone floats for a moment in the air where he’d been cupping it, its glow fading, before slowly sinking down and settling against Phil’s chest.

“Wow,” Phil says, his voice hushed. “That was—”

“Keep it tucked under your shirt,” Clint orders him, and pushes to his feet. “Safer, ya know?”

Phil looks up at him, something indefinable in his eyes. “Okay,” he says, and slowly loosens his tie so he can put the necklace close to his skin, which, good. That’s where it should be.

And then Phil reaches his hand out, asking for help up, and what, like Clint’ll say no? He grasps Phil’s wrist and hauls him up, but Phil doesn’t let go when he should and they end up nose to nose, far too close.

“Thanks,” Phil breathes.

“Yeah,” Clint says, flummoxed somehow, and they’re still so close, if he just moved forward half an inch… and Phil’s head is tilting, his eyelashes lowered; he’s looking at Clint’s lips and Clint _wants_ …

“Come on, ladies,” Natasha says loudly from just behind Clint’s left ear. He and Phil both jump, startling them apart, the dangerous moment lost. And then they’re turning and gathering their things. Natasha and Jess are waiting at the edge of the clearing, impatient to the extreme.

“Let’s go,” Clint says, and doesn’t meet Phil’s eyes.

~

The walk to the Erlking’s lands is far easier than Clint had anticipated. Really, it’s simple enough—dryish weather, level ground, forest paths—that he’s on edge just about every second, waiting for something to jump out at them from behind any of the trees they pass—and they pass thousands.

Not to say that they stay entirely in the Nevernever, or that the forests are all the same. Nat and Jess take turns cutting holes back onto the mortal plane, and they walk for short distances through downtown London, rural China, and the Nile Basin. But those jaunts human-side aren’t long, and they spend far more time wandering paths worn down by the supernatural.

Finally, Nat—who’s leading the single-file party, followed by Clint, and then Phil, and then caboosed by Jess—stops still and holds out her hand. The spot they’ve halted on doesn’t appear any different than the rest of the path they’ve been walking. It’s a vaguely moonscape setting, a land with perpetually grey skies and tall, twisting pillars of tortured black obsidian. There’s been no water or vegetation as far as Clint can see, and the path’s nothing more than a subtle indentation over shifting volcanic ash.

“We’re here,” Nat says. “Can you feel it?”

And now that she mentions it…

The air’s… thick, and full of potential, but it’s almost like the negative of a gathering storm. Instead of the hair on the back of his neck standing up, Clint’s pretty sure it pushes down further against his skin, and if he listens hard enough, he can almost hear the echoes of cruel laughter, or a boisterous party. When he takes a deep breath, there’s a waft of something sweet in the air, and his stomach lurches when he recognizes the scent—there’s only one meat that simultaneously smells so good yet nauseating. Long pork.

“Stars,” he whispers, and swallows. “Okay. Okay, so, you just open a space—”

“We can’t,” Jess contradicts him. “You’re the one seeking audience. You have to enter by your own means.”

Clint nods. “Right, that makes sense.” He’s good at breaking through barriers, infiltrating where he’s not supposed to be, so this is something he’s used to.

He unslings his pack and drops it to his feet. Jess circles past him, careful to stay on the path, and comes to stand next to Nat, while Phil moves closer, his presence comforting and grounding. With a touch of amusement, Clint notes that he’s still got the rocket launcher slung over his shoulder, for as much good as it’ll do in the Nevernever.

“Phil,” Clint says, and Phil looks at him expectantly. “Gimme a kiss, will you?”

Phil looks taken aback. “What?”

Clint smiles ruefully. One of the issues with Phil’s transformation is the problem of his Kiss. It’s a subduing sort of venom that’s transferred from Reds to their prey, and is designed to make a person open to suggestion and desirous of various joys of the flesh. Phil’s Kiss—him being only half-turned—isn’t as powerfully paralyzing as a full-blown vampire’s, but it’s still affecting.

And while there are other methods that Clint could use to open his mind a bit, this one will surely be the most pleasant.

“I need to relax and be able to see,” he explains softly. “And I—look, I’d really like to. Please, Phil?” One last kiss, because if all goes well, Clint won’t be his own man anymore when this is all said and done.

Phil searches his face for a long moment, clearly still unsure, but whatever he sees there seems to decide him. So he drops his pack, too, and steps closer, one hand sliding sensuously around Clint’s waist, the other rising to cup his neck, his jaw.

“I love you nearly unbearably,” he says, and it’s Clint’s turn to be taken aback. “Please don’t be stupid.”

“I—” Clint tries to say, but Phil’s already tugging him close, their lips sliding together in easy familiarity. They haven’t kissed—not like this—in over a hundred years, wet and smooth and with gentle pressure, Phil’s tongue pressing into his mouth with intent. Clint’s breath catches, his fingers flexing involuntarily at Phil’s waist, his shoulder, bunching Phil’s clothing under his grip as he’s kissed. Clint closes his eyes and focuses on the sheer perfectness of the moment, this part of Phil that he’s missed so much, it’s like he’s drugged, it’s—”

It’s like he’s drugged. Which he is.

Reluctantly, Clint pulls away, keeping his eyes closed. He can feel Phil falter, his hands tightening for a split second before he steps back, too. Clint breathes deep. It wasn’t a goodbye kiss, except in every way that it probably was.

But now—focus.

Clint stretches out his senses, using the elevated euphoria Phil’s Kiss gave him to buoy him up, this relaxed state of mind that makes it so simple to slip into the world beyond the world, and opens his Sight at the same time he opens his eyes.

It’s a heady rush—using Wizard’s Sight in the Nevernever is always overwhelming, but this is nearly impossible. Phil, standing in front of him, is a writhing humanoid shape of slim, dark energy, the pendant Clint gave him earlier today a blazing beacon of brighter-than-the-sun light over the center of his chest. It’s touching the tendrils of black that’re seeping through every inch of Phil’s being and turning them gold, its protective magic already strong and steady, and it lightens Clint’s heart to see it.

Unlike the ground on which they’re standing, which is not heart-lightening at all; the stones surrounding them are twisting themselves into new shapes that Clint now recognizes as the souls of unfortunate beings trapped here, those who stepped off the path or failed in their attempts to gain entrance to the Erlking’s lands. “Stay on the path, Phil,” he murmurs, but isn’t really able to see if he’s heeded, already turning, dreamlike, toward the surge of power that he can sense just behind him.

It’s a door, a pulsing, heavily warded thing with thousands of locks and enough heavy enchantments to bring down a battalion of rawheads. Enough maybe to bring down a naagloshii. Stars and stones, that’s a lot of power.

Nat and Jess are barely noticeable on the other side of it, just two pale fae wreathed in auras of ice blue and pale green, respectively. And it’s saying something, because usually just looking at Nat with his Sight gives Clint a migraine.

Clint holds up his hand and touches his fingers lightly to the empty air where the door’s shimmering. It’s nothing corporeal, because of course it wouldn’t be, but he can touch it all the same. His fingers sink into the power slightly, just past the pads. He can feel tingling all the way through his arm up to his shoulder. “ _Descoperi_ ,” he ventures, pushing hard, though he doesn’t give it all his will quite yet. He needs to feel this one out. The door quivers. It’s a good sign.

“ _Pauză_ ,” he says next, with a touch more inflection, and sends a surge of his power down his arm and into the door. The wards push back against him and he winces. The tips of his fingers are starting to feel raw so he brings up his other hand and presses that one down as well. The tingling redoubles, the power actively fighting against him now. It’ll come down to a battle of wills.

Clint has always been very stubborn.

“Dammit, open,” he orders. “By my power, I command it, _lasa-ma inauntru, eu poruncesc să deschideți cu mine_ ,” and he sends a shock of power so great into the door that his knees sag. He distantly feels Phil’s arms catching him around the waist, holding him up, and he shouts, “Open!”

The door crumbles.

Clint’s not really prepared for the sight that greets him, a direct line into the Erlking’s inner sanctum. He’s still got his Sight on, is the thing, and there are some things that no mortal man—no matter how powerful a wizard he may be—should ever see with that sort of clarity.

To say he’s going to have nightmares for a few years would be understating it.

But Clint’s got a mission to do, so after he immediately expulses the contents of his stomach onto the dead ground at his feet, he closes his eyes, wills off his Sight, and then looks back up. Nat and Jess are smiling at him, so he gestures them forward; they’re his heralds, after all.

They step through the broken door with twin auras of regality, shimmering for a moment on this plane of existence before solidifying in the one next door. Clint gathers himself and then follows them, Phil close on his heels. The door snaps shut behind them. Clint hopes _that_ isn’t an omen.

He’d felt the sounds of the party they’re stepping into across worlds, but the room they materialize in now is dead silent. They’re at the center of a huge stone hall lined with banquet tables, all of them groaning under the weight of their burdens. Clint fights down screwing up his face in distaste; he’d been right, earlier, and the meat he could see displayed and half-eaten was not strictly animal in nature.

They’re surrounded by—well, the polite term is goblins—and a myriad of other wyldfae. The beings the Erlking keeps a loose hold of aren’t affiliated with either side of the faerie world, neither Winter nor Summer, and as a result tend to be a bit more… well, _wild_ , as their name suggests. There’re creatures of all shapes and sizes gathered around the tables, some significantly more human-looking than others, some so very clearly not.

And every single one of them is staring directly at Clint.

“We entreat an audience,” Natasha says, pacing out several yards ahead of him and flanked by Jess. She comes to a stop near the foot of a monumental throne at the head of the room, an intricately carved pedestal that’s rendered into the shapes of nature. Nothing’s spared in its design, and both the cruelty and wonder of the natural world are represented. It’s beautiful and terrible and holds a being equally awesome in his power; the Erlking himself.

Clint’s eyes slide off him as he tries to get a look, like he can’t quite manage to keep the fae fully in his sights. It’s disconcerting to say the least, but he does manage to get an impression of height, and of darkness mixed with light, and great, cruel, reaching antlers worn like the most finely-hewn crown.

Even with and behind Clint and Phil, low murmurs start up, the goblins and hags and spectres all tittering at the gall this human has walking into such unfriendly territory. Clint’s fairly certain he feels the stare of a basilisk, and he knows he recognizes the growl of a bilgesnipe. Two huge black wolves pad on silent paws up to him and begin to circle and sniff, their tongues lolling.

He can feel Phil tense at his back, so he holds out a low hand: _stay calm._

The voice that rumbles though his core when the Erlking speaks is enough to nearly stop his heart. Clint gets the distinct impression that the fae _could_ stop his heart with a single word, but chooses to refrain from doing so.

“And what, little faeries,” the Erlking murmurs, amusement lancing through his words, “do you wish to seek audience about?”

“A human’s proposition,” Jess says. “We come to you as representatives from our opposite allegiances, to present Wizard Clinton Barton.” She and Natasha both bow low, their duties as heralds fulfilled. The way their group is being stared at, Clint’s sure they’ve actually more than done their duty; he gets the feeling that he and Phil would have been killed on sight without faerie guides. And as little as Clint can lay claim on them, he sincerely hopes Nat and Jess don’t disappear on him and Phil. But they just step backward gracefully, out of the way off to the side, and settle in to watch.

And then the full brunt of the Erlking’s attention focuses on Clint.

He swallows down his nerves and takes several steps forward, gesturing for Phil to stay put. “Your, uh, Excellence,” he stammers, and then takes a breath and centers his nerves. He can do this. “I come to you asking a gift.”

“A gift,” the Erlking repeats incredulously. “Whyever would I favor a human trespasser with a gift?”

“Because I would give you something in return,” Clint tells him, and forces himself to look directly at the place where the Erlking’s face should be. It makes his eyes ache, but he keeps his gaze steady.

“Oh?” The Erlking leans forward on his throne. “What do you have, Wizard, that I could possibly want?”

“Winter and Summer have their Knights,” Clint says, which sets off another round of tittering that he doesn’t quite understand. “Their mortal champions. You’ve always been equal in power to the Queens, but they have also always had an edge.” He bows his head, baring the back of his neck. “I offer myself, your Excellence. For exchange of a spell I know you keep in your possession, the chance to use it as I see fit, and safe passage for my friends away from this place, I offer you my soul as your Knight.”

The hall erupts into cacophony, and clear above the rest of the rabble is Phil’s tortured, “No, Clint! What are you doing!?” There’s a scuffle, and Clint’s acutely aware that Phil’s just been tackled to the ground, restrained when he tried to go to Clint’s side.

Clint doesn’t turn around. He couldn’t possibly meet Phil’s eyes right now.

On the throne, the Erlking brings a hand up to his chin, thinking. If Clint could judge—the best he could possibly judge a shadowy shape of primal nothingness—he looks interested.

“What is this spell you ask in return?” he asks.

“The Unraveling,” Clint says simply. “It is… important.”

“That it is,” the Erlking agrees, and then rises slowly from his seat. He simply keeps going up and up, a force of power so poignant that it’s everything Clint can do to keep himself standing in the face of it. He steps down a few wide, stone steps to bring himself level with the rest of the hall, and then paces forward, stopping mere feet in front of Clint. And then he seems to shrink down, become something more _real_ , something Clint can look at without his mind threatening to bend and crack.

He takes a long look directly at Clint’s face, his own still shrouded in shadow but more understandable from this angle, and then circles him once, locking his hands behind his back and giving Clint penetrating, assessing scrutiny.

“So,” he finally rumbles, still circling. Clint tenses, but fights down his urge to follow the faerie’s movements. “You would name yourself my Knight.”

“For such a simple price,” Clint agrees. “Freely given, freely received. I just ask this one spell, the right to use it, and safe passage for my friends, and then,” he bows his head, feeling the hair prickle on the back of his neck. He has never felt so exposed in all his long life. “I swear by my magic. My life for you.”

“Goddamn it, Clint!” Phil shouts, but the—probably goblins—holding him tight shove him down harder into the floor, and he grunts in pain. Clint trembles from holding back the urge to go to him.

The Erlking is silent for a long moment, though he stills directly in front of Clint, who keeps his head bowed. “You are an admirable warrior,” the fae observes. “Besides the fact that there are not many that walk on this earth who can break into my stronghold, I have heard of you, Wizard Barton.” He leans close. “Blood flows easily in your wake.”  

“Yes,” Clint says, because it’s true. He’s killed more than he likes to remember, and will doubtless do more in the service of a master like the Erlking. “I will be an asset to whatever cause you wish. I will be the arrow you only need point.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” the Erlking mutters. “You entered my realm; I could simply have you ride with me on my Hunt.”

“No offense, sir,” Clint says, “but your Hunt is one day of the year. Surely you have interests that lie on other days.”

There’s another long beat of silence. Then: “I would know you, Clinton Francis Barton.”

Alarmed, Clint looks up. Directly into the gaze of the most powerful wyldfae imaginable, and he’s helpless as he’s sucked into a soulgaze.

Everything plummets away. Clint’s awareness sharpens painfully, wrapped and warped and subsumed by the sheer force that is the Erlking’s magic. His Sight is forced open and he sees—he sees the truth in the bright, horrible, awesome glory of it and he’s

_cringing under the fist that beat him for summoning fire, even though they’d been cold, so cold, and the woods were wet, and his mother was coughing and he’s_

_kissing Phil for the first time and expecting a sharp fist to the face because Phil is the son of a rich merchant and men who lie with men are hellbound but instead of a beating he’s given an open mouth and hands tight and desperate on his arms and he’s_

_carving runes into his bow that will focus his mind and let him kill and he’s_

_sobbing in the snow of the Nevernever and Natasha is touching his face and asking why he is letting tears freeze to his cheeks and he_

_walks into the mansion where the Reds took Phil and there is fire licking in cold white flame up his arms and in his fists and in his eyes and in his heart and they are screaming and dying and it feels so good and he_

_talks to a man with evil-looking tattoos crawling unpleasantly up his arms who tells him that he can leave his lover with them and that they will protect him, Clint won’t have to worry anymore, the Fellowship will take this burden from him and he’s_

_killing men for the Council, their Blackstaff, their executioner, because he feels nothing without Phil’s grounding presence and he’s_

_killing innocents and he’s_

_sinking into the primordial presence of wild magic, cold fire cracking impersonally, sheer joy echoing as the spirits of nature rise up and swallow him down, the terror of the long, dark night mixing indistinguishably with the joy of a new morning and he’s_

standing in the Erlking’s chambers, panting, shaking. Clint falls to his knees. “Oh, stars,” he whispers. “Oh, please.” There’s a circle of scorched stone radiating out from him, and the hall’s fallen silent once again.

The Erlking crouches next to him and reaches out; one finger is all he needs to angle Clint’s head up to meet his eyes. They are cold, the ice of a distant star. Clint cringes, and the Erlking smiles.

“I will give you what you ask.”  

“Thank you,” Clint breathes, and the last thing he knows—last before the Erlking is gathering him up and plunging into him, the raw Mantle of power surging through him as icy warm lips meet his own, a kiss of death and life, of promises and betrayals, of everything and nothing—is Phil’s anguished scream.

~

Clint wakes up in a strange bed.

His mouth is dry and his entire body aches, and when he tries to open his eyes, the light creeping in through a low window in the wall opposite is like a bolt to the head. He whimpers and tries to roll away, but then realizes that he has something clutched in his hands.

Forcing his eyes open is no small feat, but when he does—

He’s holding a small, tattered grey cloth. It’s unassuming, rough knit, but the power—the power he can feel coursing through his hands is nearly unbearable. “Stars and stones,” he murmurs. “I, I did it.”

“You certainly did,” Phil answers him tiredly, and Clint whips around, wincing both at the sudden movement and the increase in light, and then again at the beaten look he finds to greet him on Phil’s face. “Your new master seemed unconcerned when you collapsed,” Phil volunteers flatly. “He let me take you out of that place and said you’d know when he wanted your services.” He lowers his head, staring blankly at the floor. “I sent Natasha and Jess away. I needed…I wanted…”

Clint wets his lips nervously when it becomes clear that Phil’s not going to say anything further. “Phil?”

“What were you thinking, Clint?” Phil asks him, full of deadly calm. “You gave up your _essence_ for a bauble for the Merlin!” His composed façade cracks a little and he threads his hands through his hair and tugs lightly at the roots before dropping his hands back into his lap. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“It’s not for the Merlin,” Clint says quickly, staggering to his feet and moving toward Phil with intent. He sways a little, but powers on; he _has it_ , he can _do it_ , finally, _finally_ , he can make things right. “Phil, it was never for the Merlin, I would never let that asshole get his grubby paws on it.”

“What?” Phil asks, retreating even as Clint advances until his back’s pressed against the rough wall of the room Clint’s woken in. “You’re not making sense. Why else would you want that thing? It’s just a _spell_ , Clint. There’s nothing in your life so bad that you’d need that, is there?”

“It’s not—stars, Phil, it’s for _you_ ,” Clint says softly. “I’ve been searching for something to break your curse for decades, and this—” he brandishes the cloth still clutched in his hands; it shimmers innocently in the low light. “—this can _fix_ you.”

“Clint—” Phil starts to say, his face clouding over, but that’s all he gets out before the door to the room suddenly is blown off its hinges. They both duck down, shouting in surprise, protecting their heads as wooden shrapnel from the destroyed door pelts them. Clint feels several points where he’s skewered by splinters, but he’s on his feet the second he’s able, tucking the Unraveling into his pocket—which is _absolutely not_ the best way to treat an incredibly powerful magical artifact—and facing the gaping hole where the door was. There’s silence from past the threshold.

“Where are we?” he asks Phil, thinking furiously. He doubts that this is a test from the Erlking, though he could be wrong. More likely it’s one of his own bounty hunters finally caught up to him.

“Brazil,” Phil answers. “A Fellowship compound. There’s no one else here, everyone got called to Mexico, the Reds are performing a rite and it’s all hands on deck.”

Huh, that can’t be good. Clint’ll ruminate on the implications of that later. He glances around the spare room. “Where’s my bow?”

“Under the bunk.”

A quick look at Phil tells Clint all he needs to know; Phil’s tattoos are out in all their redly disconcerting glory, and his eyes are gone pure black. He’s also materialized guns in both hands, but his breath is as calm as it ever is.

Clint ducks down swiftly and gathers his bow, the darkly polished wood leaping to life in his hands, the runes he’d painstakingly carved into it set to life with the sort of deep purple magic that’s unique to Clint. While most wizards prefer staffs or staves, with the odd ones out making use of wands or rods, Clint’s always felt most at home with his bow. To be fair, it is a longbow, its span almost of a height with him, and it’s heavy, certainly able to double as a melee weapon if that’s what the situation calls for.

Clint sincerely hopes that this situation will not call for it, but he’s never been particularly lucky.

Except—except that he can feel _something_ rising up from the ground to meet him, a more primal sort of magic than anything he’s ever really felt before. With a jolt, he realizes that it’s the Mantle of the… well, he guesses he’d be called the Wyld Knight, wouldn’t he?

Clint doesn’t reach for it right away, though he can feel that power rushing toward him from the very air that surrounds them. No need to go full-hog just yet. He’s good enough on his own. “Whoever you are,” he says pointedly past the broken doorway, “you are going to regret this.”

“I doubt it, Barton,” a softly accented voice returns. “With the price on your head, believe me, I am very motivated.” This statement is punctuated by a wet, meaty rumble.

Stars and stones, it’s Clint’s eternal pain in the ass, Kazimierczak. And by the sound of it, he’s brought another of his rawhead constructs. Clint huffs out a frustrated breath. Just when he thought that asswipe of a clown can’t get more annoying, he shows up and defies all of Clint’s (admittedly low) expectations.

“It’s the Clown,” he tells Phil, who sends him a blackly unreadable look. “He’s the assassin who sent the rawhead after me, and whose trap Natasha intercepted us away from. He’s been on my ass for a while, but since I’m not often on the moral plane…”

“You’re on the mortal plane now,” Phil points out, and when he speaks, Clint catches a glimpse of sharpened incisors. Well, that’s… unexpected. And weirdly attractive. Clint blinks and refocuses his attention out the blasted-in door.

“Kazi…” he calls, lowering his voice into something half-entreating. “Kazi, we don’t have to do this.”

There’s a beat of silence, but when Kazimierczak answers, it’s with a clear grin in his voice. The guy’s unhinged. “Oh, Barton, I think we do.”

Fair enough. Clint takes a deep breath and tries to center himself for what he’s sure will be a quick and violent fight. Violent because it’s Kazimierczak, and quick because it’s him. He flexes his hands around his bow and concentrates.

It’s harder than usual, and it takes Clint a moment to realize why.

It’s—it’s just that he can feel the power of his newly-minted Mantle thrumming through him, practically begging him to unleash it. It’s heady, a thick sort of barely restrained thrumming under his skin that once he recognizes, he squashes down quickly. That close to the surface, he can taste the danger of that magic in his very soul, and he’s pretty sure that if he uses it right now, he’ll be lost forever. His own magic has meant that over the years he’s always a bit preternaturally aware of his surroundings, of the earth under his feet and the fire and ice that lurk in unrealized potential in the air around him, but this—this is something else.

It’s the long indifferent history of nature’s power at his fingertips, the uncaring, immutable presence of wild, dark magic. He’s heard whisperings about how Knights are changed for the worse when they use the gifts the faerie bestow upon them, but he hasn’t really believed them until now. He abruptly realizes that without a doubt, there will be no coming back from using this new magic, and he still wants to talk to Phil one last time before he’s sure he has to say goodbye forever.

He smiles to himself; the White Council will be sure to label him a warlock when he taps into this particular reservoir. Buncha assholes.

Still. He has other matters at hand. “You chose the wrong fucking day to knock down my door, assbutt,” Clint says, and steps forward into the threshold.

Kazimierczak is standing on the far side of a clearing that opens in front of the narrow building in which Phil has stationed them. To be fair, he’s not an idiot; he’s mostly protected behind a crumbling wall on which he’s drawn a handful of runes. They shift under Clint’s gaze, imparting their meanings: strength, repellant force, defense.

Clint snorts and flicks his fingers, letting his own familiar power trickle through the earth under his feet and across to the far side of the pleasant grassy clearing. Since Clint’s older than he looks, it’s really little more than a tickle, just playing with earth, something he’s done thousands of times. But even that miniscule expenditure of power seems to wake something up inside of him, and he’s made aware of the fact that his little show is a bare hint at the extent of his truly enhanced range.  

Redoubling his focus, he ignores the Mantle for now and lets out a pleased breath as the wall in front of Kazi crumbles into dust. It’s nice just to see the shock on the idiot’s painted white face.

There’s an intake of breath and Clint feels Phil’s comforting presence at his shoulder. It’s a good sort of presence, steady. Dependable. And thus emboldened, Clint steps further into the clearing.

This, in retrospect, may have perhaps been a mistake, because in the dazed rush of wrapping his head around his newfound abilities, Clint has entirely forgotten that Kazi didn’t come alone.

The rawhead hits him from the right side like a sledgehammer to a pile of squishy human-shaped meat, and Clint goes flying, his bow slipping uselessly from his hands. He’s taken by such surprise that he’s not able to get up a shield spell in time, and lands almost twenty yards away; would have in fact flown farther if not for the questionably-fortunate interception on his part by the broad side of another building.

He slides down its stuccoed side and collapses in a puddle at the base of the foundation, a sharp pain in his chest, already coughing up blood, and distantly aware of Phil emptying his weaponry into the rawhead’s back, for as little good as handheld ordinance will do against a thing like that. “Phuuulll…” he tries, but then the rawhead’s wrapping rancid claws around his neck and lifting him to his feet, dangling him with just enough slack that the toes of his boots brush the ground.

This close up, he can really see the details of the thing: this one’s bigger than the one Phil blew a hole in a couple days ago, for starters, and has apparently appropriated the head of a bull. The poor bovine’s skin is the only mostly-intact aspect of the thing’s visage, nestled deep under shoulders that look like they’ve been flayed, ripped to shreds, and then sloppily reassembled. It has to be ten feet tall, almost entirely filling his vision, its hulking, coiled mishmash of body parts all roped together haphazardly. Bits of broken-off bone jut out where they’re not needed, slime drips from every awkward stitch, and the whole thing is crawling with maggots and smells very strongly of rot.

There’s a moment of hope when Phil’s guns merely pause, but then Kazimierczak says something unintelligible and a thick silence falls over the clearing. Clint tries to wriggle his way out of the rawhead’s grasp, but there’s no way he’s getting past those claws before everything goes black. He’s already greying dangerously at the edges and isn’t thinking clearly. Magic gathers and recedes in his hands, fading and flickering and indecisive.  

“Don’t let up,” Kazi orders his construct, appearing like a particularly unpleasant specter at the corner of Clint’s vision. His softly accented voice is full of glee and malice. “This was much easier than I had anticipated, Barton. Thank you.”

“Fhuu yuu,” Clint manages. The grey’s creeping in deeper, now. He doesn’t have many seconds left of consciousness if this keeps up.

“Oh, now, is this any way to speak to your betters?” Kazi asks with a smirk. He taps the fingers of one hand against Clint’s cheek mockingly. “Now, let us see. My employers desire you largely intact, but some things are not necessary, not right now.” His forehead creases in mock concern. “Besides, you are far too dangerous with free use of your senses. So… let us remove your words,” he continues, and then follows that up with something in butchered Polish. There’s a sucking feeling, and then Clint realizes that he can’t—well, he can’t make a sound. His struggles redouble, but Kazimierczak just laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound.

“Your eyes next, I think,” Kazimierczak says musingly, and no, no, _no_. Clint flails, completely trapped and increasingly panicked in the rawhead’s grasp. There’s some more Polish, and a half-second later, everything goes dark. What little air Clint is pulling in past the rawhead’s claws turns into sharp, panicked breaths. His _eyes_ , stars _no_ …

“Is good, no?” Clint’s hands are up and clawing fruitlessly at the rawhead’s claws, and if he could make a noise, he’s sure he’d be screaming. He can feel Kazi’s cool fingers trailing aimlessly over his face, down his arms. “Shame they will not let me do more permanent damage.” He leans in, something Clint can tell by the hot wash of his breath over Clint’s ear. “I could play with you, you know. But for now I will leave you like this. You can listen and know how helpless you are.”

Clint tries to shake his head, but the rawhead’s grasp is like iron.

“Since my employers have denied me my fun with you,” Kazimierczak hisses, low, “then I think I will instead kill the man who tried to defend you. I will not make it quick, Barton, and then when I am done with him I will slit his throat and gift his flesh to my construct, with the expectation that when you are given back your sight, the first thing you will see will be his dead face on my monster’s body.”

_Phil._

Clint stills, rage descending in such a blank wall of fury that he simply can’t control his muscles. He barely twitches as Kazimierczak laughs, low and evil, and turns away, his shoes crunching in the dirt that Clint’s disturbed during the fight. There’s not even a hint of doubt that he’s not bluffing.

Everything goes silent as Clint closes blank, unseeing eyes, but when he opens them again, he has turned on his Sight. His mind is made up.

Through the filter of his Sight, the rawhead is nothing more than a gauzy spark of nothingness, a near-empty vessel. Clint will deal with it in a moment. For now he concentrates on Kazimierczak, who is walking away from him, his back turned as he advances on Phil, who appears to be bound and gagged on the ground, pale coiling tendrils of sickly-looking magic wrapped around his wrists and ankles, his mouth. He’s radiating furious red and black anger, but Clint’s pendant still glows with vivid amber light in the center of Phil’s chest.

Resigned to whatever fate will make of him after all is said and done, Clint opens his mind and lets the wyld magic flow in.

It’s like turning a floodlight onto the darkened recesses of a cave, like surfacing after a lifetime underwater, like breathing fresh air after being caught in a vacuum. Clint’s instantly connected to the earth, can feel her titanic breath under his feet, can touch the utter indifference of Nature. He takes a breath and he’s everywhere and everything and he can see with awful clarity the scenes of creation and destruction playing out the world over, from the birth of the smallest gnat to the inevitable genocide of a race of monsters.

He sees Phil and his fierce love.

He sees Kazimierczak and his broken mind.

He sees the rawhead and its empty soul.

He sees himself, trapped in this nothing monster’s terrible embrace, his eyes open and glowing with the pure white light of creation and this sort of clarity, Clint thinks, will absolutely drive him insane. 

Clint flicks his fingers. “ _Ignis_ ,” he says, or thinks, pulling white fire effortlessly from the earth’s core to wrap around the rawhead. It burns almost instantly, its stolen tendons severing and muscles blackening, cracking with sharp pops. Clint’s neck is released, but he doesn’t fall. Instead he wraps his newfound magic around himself and floats about two inches from the ground, his bloody clothing drifting weightlessly, his short hair buffeted by impossible unseen winds. His wounds are present, blood dripping from his nose and mouth innumerable lacerations on his skin, bones broken from where he’d hit the building. But flesh is mutable, and unimportant.

He spreads his hands.

“Kazimierz Kazimierczak,” he pronounces, or projects, and watches with a detached sort of interest as the clown spins in shocked horror, shouting something Clint cannot hear. He sees the bolts of energy loosed at him easily enough, though, and blocks them idly with bare gestures of his hands. “Enough,” he says. Thinks. He’s unsure. His thoughts are moving slowly, subsumed by the enormity of experience.

With another flick of his fingers, Kaz…Kazi… the human… freezes in place. Clint is starting to lose the thread of this fight, but he is almost positive that this human is a nuisance. A detriment to his species. He is sure that the human works contrary to the principals of life, so…

It takes less than a breath of power, less than energy created by a single leaf. The Wyld Knight flicks his fingers once again and vaporizes the human without another thought.

But there is still something else marring the lines of the world: another creature. The Knight turns his attention away from the smear left by the obnoxious human and instead onto the not- _quite_ -human that lies restrained on the ground. The half-man is bleeding, and is trying to say something. A tendril of memory floats up in what is now passing for the Knight’s mind. Curious, he reaches out, breaking the half-man’s bonds. _Clint_ , he says, as he wobbles to its feet. The Knight can read his lips. _Clint_.

The half-man holds up his hands beseechingly. The Knight floats itself closer; it doesn’t get a feeling of malice from the creature. Fear, yes, but that’s to be expected. Only a fool wouldn’t fear the raw power of nature personified.

The half-man is reaching out, his hands slow and aiming for something on the Knight’s person. A pocket, a _something_ in the pocket, something that glows with light and power and is very beautiful. The Knight watches, fascinated, and the half-man tugs the spell free from its place and stares at it for a moment before lifting it up closer, raising it near the Knight’s face.

_Please_ , the half-man says. The Knight lowers his head, inexplicably invested in making this particular form of life happy, and experiences the soft scratch of woven cloth on its lips before everything goes black.

~

Clint wakes up (again) in a strange bed.

Or, not so strange—it’s a twin to the bed he’s sure he woke up in not a few hours ago, and he’s got a twin headache, and a twin throb of unpleasantness in his body. His neck aches, though, and his hands, and his back and ribs and actually just about every bone in his body. He’s got snippets of a memory of a fight with Kazimierczak, too, and the sharp metallic taste of blood in the back of his throat, so he’s almost positive that this isn’t just a case of really extreme déjà vu.

He turns his head slowly, and next to his bed, Phil smiles faintly at him. It’s not the happiest smile Clint’s ever seen on his face. “Hey,” he croaks, and a muscle flexes in Phil’s jaw.  

“You’re beat up fairly badly,” Phil says flatly. His tattoos are pale grey ghosts on his skin, and Clint wonders just how much all this blood he can feel in drying tacky streaks on his face and clothes is testing Phil’s control. Phil, being Phil, notices him noticing, and tilts his head. “I’m not hungry. Don’t worry.”

“Not worried,” Clint mumbles, which is mostly true. Phil knows his limits. But things are a little blurry there at the end. “What—”

Phil frowns and leans back in the chair he’s found for himself, crossing his arms. “You accepted the Mantle and killed Kazimierczak and his construct.”

Oh. Well, there’s that. Clint experimentally flexes his hands. They’re blistered again, like he’d called up fire. He really needs to work on that spell. But… “I don’t…  I don’t feel any different?”

Phil’s gaze on him is cool and assessing. “No.”

Foreboding rises up quick and cloying in Clint’s throat. “What’d you do, Phil?”

“I undid it. I used the Unraveling.” Phil looks pleased with himself, though his chin’s raised like he’s expecting a fight. “You were gone, Clint. There’s a reason there’s no Wyld Knight. There was nothing human left of you once you’d accepted that power.”

He’s so sure of himself, but Clint’s heart is doing nothing but breaking with this news, and he kinda wants to punch Phil right now. _Would_ punch him, if only he could move. “I’m almost positive that there’s no way the Mantle can come back to you without outside influence,” Phil says. “Not if how you described the Unraveling was true.” He pauses. “Everything’s okay, Clint, you don’t have to serve the Erlking, and the Merlin can’t be upset with you if there’s no Unraveling spell to be had.” He takes a breath and smiles a little, hopeful. “Everything’s okay.”

Clint’s frozen.

“No,” he says, and Phil’s face falls, confused. Clint shakes his head, ignoring the vertigo and nausea and pain, and yells, “It was supposed to be for _you_ ,” and judging by the way Phil leans backward and blinks at him, he’s at least surprised him. Clint sucks in a breath, fighting down the pressure he can feel gathering hot and painful behind his eyes, because—

Because it was all for nothing. Fucking _nothing,_ and Phil is still cursed, still not quite human, and now any chance that Clint had had to undo that is gone. Phil said the Wyld Mantle made him inhuman? Well, his loss of self would have been a small price to pay for Phil getting his life back.

Clint pushes himself up, ignoring the pain in his fury and angrily scrubbing his blistered knuckles into his eyes to try to push back against the tears. “It was for _you_ , you asshole,” he spits, “it was supposed to make you human again, I wanted to undo it all, because then you could—you could—” He closes his eyes tight, but it’s too much—too much disappointment. Hot, furious tears leak out from the corners of his eyes. He can’t even look at Phil right now.

Tentative fingers touch lightly to Clint’s shoulder, but Clint jerks away, flinching in renewed pain and burying his face in his arms and shaking with combined rage and misery. He’d been so _ready_ , and now there was nothing. No hint of hope.

There’s a pregnant pause and then a noticeable absence, almost a vacuum of life in the room. There’s no more comforting hand at Clint’s shoulder, no hint of movement from behind his closed eyelids. And when Clint finally gathers his courage and opens his eyes again, Phil’s nowhere to be seen.

Somehow, Clint’s not surprised.

It takes him a long time, but eventually his tears dry up and he passes out into an uneasy sleep.

~

When he wakes again, it’s to an icy hand smoothing his hair back from his forehead and his skin tingling from residual magic. Clint frowns without opening his eyes; he knows that energy anywhere. “Nat?”

“Shh, little bird,” she soothes. “You’ve been hurt badly.” Her voice is distant and tinged with ice, tinged with disappointment. He pushes himself up with his elbows and tries to scrub the sleep out of his eyes. He’s pleasantly surprised with his range of movement, though his skin feels tight and new and his ribs still ache with a low, unpleasant throb. Natasha must have spent some time healing the lesser of his injuries, but even she can’t heal broken bones.

“Whas—what’s happening?” He manages, grimacing when Natasha summons an ice chip from thin air and feeds it to him. He sucks it quickly into nothingness and then glares at her.

Natasha looks down at him placidly, her face set, though there’s a hint of amusement around her eyes. “You fought Kazimierczak,” she says. “And while you beat him, I would not say that you won much of anything.” She glances away then, out a low set window and toward where the sun is streaming into the room. “First, because the Erlking will be furious that his gift was rejected so quickly. Second, because you are without the spell with which you bartered your soul. Third, because you are injured beyond my ability to repair, though you will heal in time. Fourth, because your lover has fled.”

Clint’s brow furrows as he remembers: his ribs, and then the mute terror, the sightlessness, the sharp pain of broken bones, the heady rush of power, and then—blankness, and Phil. Leaving. He winces and then pushes it all down. Swallows down the lump in his throat. Takes a deep breath.

“I’m fine.”

Natasha raises her eyebrows incredulously. “This is demonstrably untrue.”

“Shut up,” Clint grumbles, and tries to wrap his arms gingerly around his drawn-up knees before giving it up as a bad job and leaning back again, fighting down his urge to wince at the movement. “What d’you think’s gonna happen?” he asks, mock-flippantly. “I mean…”

Natasha blinks enigmatically while Clint trails off, expecting her to fill the silence. After a moment, he breaths in sharply through his nose in annoyance. Freaking _faeries_. Anyway, first things first. He needs a plan right now, a direction he can point himself in. He swallows thickly and though he can make an educated guess, he asks, “Where’s Phil?”  

Natasha glances away, which is almost more damning than anything else she could say. Clint feels a lurch as the small sliver of hope that he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding onto dies.

Natasha reaches out and cups the side of his neck, grounding. “He left. I think he…” she trails off, then reaches into her pocket with her free hand and pulls out something on a slender, powerful chain. “He summoned me and then asked me to watch over you, and to return this. As for where specifically he is, I believe he went to join his fellows at the site of a supposed rite in Mexico. There are rumblings of a battle between some few members of your Council and the Red Court.” She hesitates for a moment before adding, “For what it may be worth, I do not think he particularly wished to leave. But he was compelled by a conversation he had on his…” her brow furrows. “…iPhone.” She says the word crisply, like she’s pleased with herself for remembering it. Natasha spends even less time on the mortal plane than Clint does.

Such precision would usually inspire gentle ribbing from Clint, but now he barely hears her words. Instead he reaches out and takes the pendant from her numbly, its familiar carvings smooth under his fingers and cold to the touch, also barely registering the news about the rite, despite it probably being the event that the Merlin had wanted an upper hand in with the Unraveling. “Oh,” he says softly, his insides like ice. “I mean. I guess it’s not…” He swallows. “I guess he doesn’t need it, not anymore.” Not without any chance that Clint could break the Reds’ curse.

“I think,” Natasha says carefully, withdrawing her hand, “that for as much as he cares about you, he was very angry with what you tried to give away, and was less than pleased that you wanted to take his own decisions from him.” She reaches out again and briefly touches the back of Clint’s hand. “You should find him later, and offer him the pendant again.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “Maybe.” He holds the pendant up to the light; it gleams in the sun, full of unfulfilled promise. He doesn’t know if Phil would accept it again, not after the shit he pulled. “Man,” Clint says eventually. “I really fucked this up.” He tucks the necklace away then, clasping it around his neck for safekeeping and secreting it under his ruined shirt. Natasha doesn’t say anything, just watches him understandingly and settles in for the time being.

Clint spends the next ten minutes or so taking stock of his injuries. Natasha has apparently healed the majority of the lacerations he’d sustained earlier, covering the injuries with new, red-scarred skin. What little Clint could see of his front is a wreck of bright, shiny lines, and he’s sure his back is worse.

That’s nothing when compared to the bright, sharp pain from his ribs, though. He can barely take a breath without them shrieking in protest, and he’s not going to be doing any acrobatics anytime soon. Someone—either Phil or Natasha—has wrapped his chest, but there’s only so much bandages can do for broken ribs. He’ll just have to stick it out for as long as it takes.

His hands are acceptable. He barely remembers pulling fire out of the air to burn the rawhead, but it’s pretty clear he did so. The skin there isn’t quite as healed as what’s on the rest of his body, but Natasha’s done well enough that he can flex his hands with only a little pain. It’s probably going to be unpleasant to hold his bow, though.

Speaking of—

“Where’s my—” Clint begins, but Nat just leans over and pulls his bow from under the bed, offering it up wordlessly. Clint accepts it with a small smile, running sore fingers over the carvings. It looks unharmed, which is a miracle in and of itself. “Poor baby,” he croons gently at it. “I’ve been treating you bad these last couple days.” He promises himself an afternoon spent with oils and cleaning rags, and feels better about things all around. Concrete goals and all that.

“Are we still at the Fellowship’s base?” Clint asks once he’s sure that everything’s in order and he’s struggled into a pair of sweatpants and loose t-shirt he found in a dusty wardrobe in a corner of the room. “Maybe we should go home, regroup.” Back to the Nevernever, and then… well. Clint’s not sure. Dodge the Erlking and the Merlin for the rest of his life, he guesses.

Natasha shakes her head, unfolding from the chair in which she’s been sitting, watching him silently. “Well, you have a message,” she tells him. Clint gives her a look, because what the hell? She couldn’t have mentioned that earlier? She shrugs, unrepentant. “It was left through speaking stones with the servants at my house.” She waves her finger in the air and a slip of paper appears. “It’s from the Council’s new Blackstaff.”

Clint frowns. What on earth does McCoy want with him? He’d thought they had an understanding, the two of them. Clint had spent his time as the Council’s attack dog, and was fairly certain he’d made his disapproval of their actions and orders clear when he’d resigned and disappeared into the Nevernever. Not that there was anything inherently _wrong_ with McCoy; he seemed like a nice enough man, if a little hard around the edges.

But there’s something… connections falling into place. The Merlin’s mission, and the rising tensions with the Reds, and Mexico… Clint may spend his time out of the usual social loops, but he still talks to _some_ people. Wizard Stark, for instance, who is an incorrigible gossip for all that he’s a Warden. Clint’s lucky that Tony was the one the Merlin had assigned to keep an eye on him all those years ago when Clint’d dropped off the radar. He’s heard stories about Wardens being very… difficult… with their assigned cases, but he and Tony just get drunk whenever he’s supposed to check in on Clint. It works out for everyone.

“Isn’t McCoy the Dresden kid’s mentor?” Clint muses, not that Natasha would know. “And correct me if I’m wrong—” she raises an eyebrow and obviously doesn’t correct him “—but isn’t Dresden the one who re-started all this shit with the Reds?” He frowns. “What does the message say?”

Natasha looks down at it. “It’s a set of coordinates, a time—a little over three hours from now—and the words, ‘The Grey Council could use Hawkeye’s help, you overconfident asshole,’ which is honestly just insulting.”

Clint snorts. “Well, he’s got my attention, at least.” He considers his options. “Can you make sure my ribs won’t burst out of my chest if I go help him with whatever he wants?” He forces a smile. Doing whatever McCoy wants from him might help get his mind of the cluster that he’s undoubtedly gotten himself into. And Phil. Getting his mind off Phil is definitely a priority.

Natasha looks doubtful. “I can block most of the pain from your ribs, but I can’t heal them. You really should sleep…”

“I’m a wizard,” Clint says flippantly. “I’ll deal.” Natasha’s doubt morphs seamlessly into unimpressed incredulity, but she leans forward, touches a hand to his chest, and starts muttering healing magic under her breath anyway.

Clint closes his eyes and wills off the worry of the world settling around him. He’s got a mission. He swallows against the tingling running up and down his chest and tells himself that everything is going to be fine.

~

Three hours later, Clint gives Natasha a brief hug, steps out of the Nevernever at the designated coordinates, and is greeted with a broadsword pointed two inches from his face.

He raises his hands in surrender, silently cursing Natasha’s amused snort as she closes up the portal at his back. Traitor. “Woah, hey now,” he says. “McCoy told me to meet you guys here.” The swordbearer huffs in amusement and lowers his weapon, clearly recognizing Clint through his new scars. Clint inspects the blond haired, blue eyed, chiseled specimen of manliness and grins, recognition dinging though it’s been awhile. “Hey Steve,” he says. “Long time no see.”

“You look like shit, Clint,” says another wizard passing by, wearing _robes_ of all things, in eye-searing red and gold. Clint blithely flips him the bird, but Steve intercepts his hand and gives it a hearty shake.

“It’s good to see you, Wizard Barton. I wasn’t aware you were back on this side of the world.”

“Oh, you know,” Clint says nonchalantly. “I like to mix it up some.”

Steve nods, but then hesitates a little, glancing over his shoulder toward where a cluster of wizards are milling together  in a mixture of aimless and agitated pacing. “Tony’s right, though. You don’t look great.”

“Had a busy couple days,” Clint deflects, glancing around. A good two-thirds of the two dozen people in the clearing are Wardens. He raises his eyebrows. “And I don’t actually know the reason we’re all here?”

“Ebenezer’s going to explain,” Steve says, clapping his hand on Clint’s shoulder. Clint hides a wince as Natasha’s magic wavers, but forces a grin when Steve peers at him, concerned. “You’re really all right?” Steve asks.

“Perfect and lovely,” Clint says, just as Steve’s attention is drawn by another shimmer of someone breaking through the Nevernever. Clint watches, bemused, as Steve’s sword is raised again and then promptly batted away by a scowling dark-haired man with what appears to be a metal arm and a permanent case of bedhead.

“Damn it, Steve!” the guy growls, but the newcomer’s displeasure is wasted on Captain Awesome, who just grins and pulls the guy into a rib-crushing hug. Clint’s thrilled that he was spared that particular greeting, and smirks at the two of them before his attention is grabbed by the sound of a staff striking three times on stone and a throat clearing.

Gradually the mob of wizards coalesce into a half-circle surrounding the man of the hour, the reason they’re all in one place.

Clint’s never been sure what to call it when a gaggle of them get together. ‘Coven’ implies friendship, which is utterly out the door for most of them, Tony likes to call them a ‘War,’ which is—in Clint’s opinion—really overstating things, Steve—and most others, honestly—says ‘Council’ which is lends an air of gravitas that is usually undeserved, a ‘Nuisance’—Natasha’s word—is just mean-spirited, and Clint’s never been a fan of the word ‘Whizz.’

And he glances around now, noting the following: Tony in an emphatic, hurried—and apparently aggravated—conversation with Reed Richards, being overseen by a clearly irritated Bruce Banner; Carol Danvers and Sam Wilson hissing back and forth with one another; Bobbi Morse, Janet VanDyne, and Wanda Maximoff huddled together and giving him sidelong looks, and did he do something to offend them recently, what the hell; Jennifer Walters and Thor Odinson trying out-muscle one another; Peter Parker, Doreen Green, and—stars and stones, it’s really him—Wade Wilson all pestering Stephen Strange; and another dozen people that Clint only half-recognizes all in various states of disgruntlement.

There’s a shimmer in the air next to Clint and another half-dozen oddly-attired wizards step through. Their leader, bald as a cue ball and smiling faintly, says, “I believe the best nomenclature would be an ‘Argument’ of wizards, Mister Barton.”

Clint sighs. “Don’t read my mind, Xavier. It’s rude.”

“It’s a lost cause,” one of Xavier’s companions growls as he swishes by dramatically in his magenta coat. Xavier shrugs, unrepentant as he saunters after his less-pleasant fellow, and at the front of the gathering, McCoy raps his staff on a stone again and calls for quiet.

There’s another few seconds as the rabble calms, and then McCoy clears his throat and looks out over the crowd.

“You are all here,” he begins, “because I trust you. We may have our differences, but I know that when it really matters, every wizard gathered here would be willing to give their lives for the good of our own people.” There are a few titters at this, but McCoy ignores them. Clint crosses his arms over his chest and listens.

“One of our own is in danger this very night. For all his faults, I believe that Harry Dresden is a good man—or at least he tries to be one. Can any of you say that he has personally done you wrong? I know that I feel safe in Chicago with the like that I cannot say I feel in many other cities. And despite his spotty past, and rumors about him escalating this war between ourselves and the Red vampire Court, I believe such a fight would have been inevitable.”

“Harry lit a whole hell of a lot of them on fire,” the metal-armed wizard calls out, to the general endorsement of the gathering. He sounds approving, though, and Clint agrees with the sentiment whole-heartedly.

“That he did,” McCoy concedes. “And he may have worsened things by doing so. But he isn’t the first of us to poke the hornet’s nest, is he, Wizard Barton?”

Three dozen eyes turn to look at Clint. Spectacular. He huffs a little and then smiles crookedly. “Nope.” Clint had done more than poke the hornet’s nest back in the day; he’d lit the whole damn hive on fire. But the Reds were admittedly less organized two hundred years ago, so he’d been able to slip their radar and disappear, something the Dresden kid seemed to be unable to do. Still, it had been Clint who had soured the relations between the wizards and the Reds in the first place. “If you’ve got some Red extermination plan for us, McCoy, you know I won’t say no.”

This could be exactly what Clint needs: a good, old-fashioned fistfight.

McCoy smiles humorlessly. “Something like that. Now listen!” He raises his voice, and the wizards who aren’t already looking at him turn their attention back. “The Red Court is conducting a ceremony even as we speak. Harry’s gone in, with some small amounts of backup, but it is not enough.” He pauses for emphasis. “ _All_ of the Red Court will be at their site. _All_ of their halflings and hangers-on. Every. One. Of them.”

The titters start up again, but Clint narrows his eyes. “What about the Fellowship of Saint Giles?” he asks, raising his voice to be heard over the low tumult.

“They should be there,” McCoy says. “They’ll know to stay out of our way.”

Not particularly reassuring. Clint reaches up and idly, unconsciously, touches Phil’s pendant that he has hanging around his own neck under his shirt.

“In five minutes,” McCoy says, speaking over the lot of them, “I am opening a path directly from here, right to where I believe will be the center of their ritual. I want you, my loyal wizards, to accompany me and fight by my side. We could utterly decimate one of the worst scourges on the face of the earth. It will be dangerous, but we could turn the tide of this war, or end it for good.”

Clint glances around. He sees a number of nodding heads. And despite the fact that he’s pretty sure McCoy’s overstating a few dozen wizards’ effectiveness against the full might of one of the world’s most ruthless species all gathered in one place, he finds himself agreeing, too.

McCoy looks at the assembled wizards, and smiles, pleased. “Good,” he says. “Let’s get going.”

~

Mexico is hot and humid, especially when dumped in the middle of a forest, at the foot of Mayan ruins.

They come in hot, but what else is new?

Clint’s never seen Harry Dresden before, and at first glance, the guy’s really not all that impressive. Really, the only feel that Clint gets from the get-go is tall, gangly, and _tired_. He’s got some scarring that’ll rival the worst of Clint’s, though, and a fucking chip on his shoulder regarding the Reds.

And he fights like a man possessed, which is awfully nice.

It was the look on Dresden’s face when McCoy ripped open a hole through the Nevernever and let in the cavalry that did it, though: hope and relief and gratitude a mile wide. It’s always nice to be wanted.

And then Clint’s world focuses down to narrow points, the draw and release of his magic, hit this guy in the face, shoot that one in the throat. Don’t cringe in the dark when the freaking Reds show off their true form, hold fast.

He ends up fighting back to back with Wanda at the base of the actual swear-to-stars _ancient temple_ the Reds are sullying, her weird red magic floating out ghostlike in a steady stream that makes it look like their surroundings are washed in a mixture of blood and moonlight. It’s eerie but effective, and Clint’s bolts are hitting true every time. Not that this is usually an issue, but the light’s nice.

The pure energy that makes up his arrow shafts are getting paler, though; he’s so tired, his chest is aching with every breath, and he’s having a hard time focusing his will. So he goes on the offensive, takes a step up onto one of the lower steps that lead up the temple, and bashes a few heads in with the solid oak of his bow. It makes his chest hurt more, but it’s easier on the mind. A decent tradeoff.

He’s just getting—literally—into the swing of things when he hears the commotion. From above him in the temple, there’s chanting in a foreign tongue, a little girl’s voice, the sound of someone crying, a scuffle, a man’s voice yelling. And then a beat of silence, like the world holding its breath.

Clint feels the pulse of power that spreads out from the roof of the temple like a sick dog biting out one last time in defiance. He cringes and falls to his knees, nausea there and gone in an instant. “The fuck,” he asks, as nearby, Wanda looks confused for a moment before she shakily again raises her hands to start casting.

But then she pauses. “Clint,” she says. “Look.”

Clint lowers his defensive stance on his bow and looks around. All the Reds surrounding them are dropping, falling to the ground and dying, their false faces peeling back and showing their true forms. They’re twisted up in agony, hissing and bubbling and screaming.

“Huh,” Clint says. “Bloodline magic. Dresden musta interrupted the ritual and turned it back on them.”

Wanda laughs. “Clever.” They both take deep breaths as they slowly release their tension, turning to look out on the battlefield as a whole.

A man staggers into Clint’s line of sight, his hands held in front of his face. He’s wearing what looks like a leopardskin loincloth, and he’s—Clint cocks his head, unsure of what he’s seeing. The guy’s aging. Rapidly.

Clint sucks in a breath.

“Wanda!” he shouts. “Shit, help me, please!”

She turns, confused and frowning, and her eyes widen when she sees his panic. “Clint,” she starts to say, but he cuts her off.

“You know Phil,” he babbles, stepping forward and grasping her upper arms. “Coulson, right? My, my boyfriend, you know who he is, can you help me find him?” Phil works with the White Council all the time, he’s well known, she _has_ to know him…

Her brow furrows, though she doesn’t try to pull away. “…Yes? Why…”

“Because he’s a member of the Fellowship and they’re all gonna die!” he says, his voice gone shrill. Her mouth opens in a small sliver of shock and understanding, and then she raises her hands and closes her eyes. Clint turns away from her, scanning the crowd, but there are so many people, he doesn’t have a chance.

Clint takes a breath and focuses, shutting out the sound of someone crying near the summit of the temple, the screaming of the wounded, the sobbing of the dying, Wanda’s quiet chanting. Clint could cast the locating spell himself, but he’d need to draw a circle and center himself, and he doesn’t have the time for that. Wanda’s a much better choice when it comes to the more subtle kinds of magic.

“That way,” Wanda says dreamily, gesturing off to the northernmost front of what had been the field of battle. “Out. I can’t… there’s… he’s changing…”

Clint’s already gone, bolting down off the steps and dodging through the masses. Anyone hostile is either dying or too confused to even try to stop him, and friendlies are tending to their own wounds, though he attracts a few confused looks as he runs. “Clint!” Tony calls from where he’s sitting panting on a stone, flanked by a bloodied-up Steve and a green-tinged Bruce, but Clint ignores him and their revelry in his increasing panic.

Where, where—

Clint skids to a stop next to a blasted-out pillar. It is clearly thousands of years old, scarred and pock-marked with time (and now scorched from explosions) and is probably a national treasure or something, but just now the only thing this massive stone is good for is to hold up Phil Coulson, who is sitting propped up against it with blood on his shirt and his hands held up in front of his face, a look of extreme confusion and fright on his face.

“Phil!” Clint’s on his knees in an instant, one hand going to cup the back of Phil’s head, one tugging at Phil’s hand and lacing their fingers. “Baby, are you…” Clint loses his train of thought as crow’s feet creep out against the skin from the corner of Phil’s eyes. There are streaks of grey at his temples.

“Clint?” Phil asks, and Clint watches in horror as blood bubbles past his lips when he speaks. Clint looks down at the ruined shirt covering Phil’s chest. Shaking fingers part the cloth, and Clint sags when he sees the wound, the damage, the devastation of his chest.

“No,” he whispers. “No Phil you fucking asshole, don’t you dare die on me.”

The corner of Phil’s mouth twitches up in amusement even as his hairline starts a slow crawl of retreat up his forehead and his skin subtly sags as all his years start to catch up with him. “I love you,” he says. Slurs. “Never—never said it… enough.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Clint orders, his eyes filling with tears. “You can tell me all you want later, but right now just—” Just what. He’s panicking, doesn’t know what to do. There’s gotta be something—

The pendant.

Abruptly furious with himself for not connecting it more quickly, Clint scrabbles at his collar and then lifts the chain away from his neck, fumbling it around Phil’s even as Phil’s eyes flutter shut. Clint clasps the stone in his hands and speaks quickly, chanting the activation spell with such fervor that he almost gets it wrong—in fact he’s pretty sure he says it in the wrong order but like he’s said before, it’s the intent behind the magic that makes it work.

There’s a flash of blinding light from under his cupped palms, and then Phil stops aging.

Takes a breath, one that Clint copies, urging him on.

And then stills.

Clint rears back, shaking his head, disbelieving. “No,” he cries. “No!” He leans forward again, shaking bodily now, and grabs Phil’s shoulders. “Phil, no, please, wake up, you can’t—”

“Move,” a voice commands him, and Clint finds himself being elbowed out of the way, and then strong hands are grasping tight to his arms and pulling him backward.

“The fuck,” he shouts, but the hands are unrelenting despite how hard he fights. He cranes his head over his shoulder; it’s the wizard who Steve pulled into a hug earlier in the glen before the battle.

“Calm down,” the wizard orders, and then nods his shaggy head toward the ground and Phil. “He’ll help.”

“He’ll—” Clint echoes dumbly, and turns back round. The man leaning over Phil—Phil’s body—is unfamiliar and imposing in a way that Clint normally would find pretentious. There’s an overabundance of black leather, a shaven head, and a swear-to-stars _eyepatch_ , but right now Clint’s too numb with what just happened in his arms to really do more than focus in on the giant-ass syringe the man’s got clenched in his hand.

There’s something blue and faintly glowing in the glass, and the business end of the needle is rapidly approaching Phil’s neck.

Clint’s struggles redouble, but another hand overlays the cold grip the crazy guy’s got on his arms, and Clint stills after a moment and turns helplessly, only to find Steve’s kind face peering concernedly at him. Tony and Bruce are hovering about twenty feet away, too, looking nervous, but Steve just ducks his head and meets his eyes. “Trust me, Wizard Barton,” he murmurs. “Fury knows what he’s doing.” He cuts his eyes over toward the man kneeling over Phil. “Or at least, he thinks he does. He’ll be your best shot to save your friend.”

Next follows several minutes of charged silence, broken only by barely-audible muttering on the part of this so-called-Fury.

And then Phil gasps in a breath, his eyes flying open. Fury sits back, scrubbing a hand over his face, and the scraggly wizard lets go of Clint’s arms. Clint, for his part, collapses immediately to the ground and then crawls forward, shoving past Fury and getting his hands on Phil’s face. Phil blinks rapidly at him, and then smiles.

Clint kisses him.

Underneath him Phil melts immediately, his own hands coming up to thread tightly in Clint’s hair, his mouth opening without even the slightest hesitation. Clint draws in a shaky breath that’s mostly Phil’s exhaled air, and presses closer. He’s not feeling any of the swirling druggedness that he’s started associating with Phil’s kisses, which is a positive, and Phil seems equally disinclined to break their embrace. It’s good, even if Clint’s eyes are mysteriously wet.

It takes someone—probably Stark, the asshole—wolf-whistling pointedly to break them apart, and even then Clint only pulls back far enough so he can look Phil in the eyes while he runs his hands up and down Phil’s chest. “Are you okay?” he asks softly.

Phil nods once, but then frowns and looks down at his chest, hesitating for a heartbeat before he pushes aside blood-soaked cloth to bare his chest. There’s a jagged, terrible scar smack in the center of his sternum, but it looks years old, no sign of the horrific open wound that had been in its place just minutes ago. Clint’s pendant is resting directly over it, and is glowing with a soft amber light that Clint finds immensely reassuring.

“That’s magical,” Phil muses, and behind them, someone barks out a laugh. Phil looks around then, past Clint’s shoulder, and Clint’s rewarded for this whole fucking day when he’s up close and personal and able to clock the moment Phil’s face flushes a faint, embarrassed pink when he notices their audience.

“S-sir,” Phil stammers, pushing himself up a little and valiantly trying to protect his honor by tugging his ruined shirt back into place. Clint looks back and forth between the two of them.

“No offense,” he says, getting their attention, “but who the fuck are you?”

Fury’s eyebrows raise in amusement, while Phil cocks his head. “Nick Fury, the director of the Fellowship of Saint Giles.”

“And a wizard,” Metal-Arm interjects, flicking his hair out of his face. Clint glares at him, and the guy smiles. “And I’m Bucky,” he adds.

Clint dismisses him after another moment of eye contact, and turns back to Fury. “Not to seem ungrateful, but…”

“What did I do to him?” Fury asks, standing and brushing blood-soaked mud off his pants the best he could, which was not very. “I’ve got a few of my people deployed all over this field,” he says. “I anticipated something like this, so we developed a bit of a reversal spell.” He nods to Phil’s chest. “It was enough to repair the damage, though it’s just supposed to freeze my people in place while we figure out a way to stop their aging. It’s nowhere near as elegant as that beauty you stuck around Phil’s neck, but it’ll do.”

Phil’s hand drifts up and touches the pendant. “What?” he asks Clint, who ducks his head.

“It’s a—it’s not just a protection pendant,” he admits. “It’s a philosopher’s stone. It’ll stop you aging and protect you from illness and small injuries. I’ve got it spelled so you’re the only one who can take it off.”

“Clint,” Phil breathes, but Clint’s the one blushing now, and so he looks away. He scrambles to his feet and glances at Fury for the go-ahead before he offers his hand to help Phil up. Phil tugs himself to his feet easily, but steps close and murmurs, “We’ll talk about this,” in Clint’s ear before he turns to the man who is apparently his boss.

“The Reds are dead,” Fury says to the loose gathering as a whole. He’s stating the obvious; there’re bodies everywhere surrounding them, illuminated faintly by the very beginnings of dawn on the eastern horizon. “We’ll help the survivors clean up, and then go our separate ways.”

“Nick,” Phil starts to say, but he’s cut off with a look.

“You’re human now, Phil,” Fury says. “Or as good as. Most of our members are dead. I don’t see any harm in you taking a little time before throwing yourself back to the wolves.” And with that, he gives Clint a long, considering look. “Though I think this gentleman may have something to say about that.”

Clint snorts at the assignation, but then stills, sucking in his breath, when Phil wordlessly reaches over and laces their fingers together. “I’ll take that under advisement,” Phil says. Clint tightens their grip, and the corner of Phil’s mouth twitches up.

~

Phil’s lying on his back in the very center of Clint’s expansive bed, his breath panting out in wispy vapor in the chilled room that Clint’s taken over in Natasha’s house. Phil’s tattoos are fading down away from red and into black, and Clint knows from experience that it’ll be another five minutes or so before they’re gone altogether.

It’s nice to use the spelled tats as a barometer for Phil’s desire, instead of as a warning sign. They still come out when Phil’s blood gets up, and there’s no one that can get him hot and bothered faster than Clint.

To prove his point, Clint traces a fading mark that swirls around the jut of Phil’s hipbone with a finger, and then follows it up with his tongue, just because he can.

“You’re being overly optimistic,” Phil says hazily from somewhere above him. Clint ignores the sentiment and works his way down the crease where Phil’s leg meets his groin, breathing in the smell of their sex and reveling when Phil’s breath audibly catches. It’s been a week since the battle, and Clint still can’t believe he gets to have this.

“Clint.” Fingers in his hair get Clint’s attention, and he turns his head, resting his cheek on Phil’s thigh. Phil looks down at him fondly. “I’m not twenty anymore.”

“No,” Clint says, blinking innocently. “You’re somewhere around two hundred, but it’s okay, I won’t call you a cradle robber.”

“Shut up,” Phil sighs, but then he looks away, blushing faintly. “I mean, I don’t have the body of a twenty-year-old anymore. I’m more… I look like I’m in my fifties.”

Clint sits up. “Yeah. So?”

Phil stares at him. “Well, I’m saying that…”

“Don’t,” Clint interrupts. “If you’re about to say anything about how I don’t need to feel obligated to be with you, you can just stop it.” He muscles his way up the bed and catches Phil’s mouth in a heated kiss, and when they part several long minutes later, he rests his forehead against Phil’s. “I love you.”

Phil’s quiet for a moment before softly adding, “We do have a great deal of time to make up for.” Clint hums his agreement and rolls over, pinning Phil beneath him as he claims his mouth, territory that Phil surrenders willingly.

Phil’s just started rocking his hips up to meet Clint’s—over optimism be damned—when the double doors to Clint’s bedroom slam open and Natasha stalks in, her hair a fiery halo that blows in invisible winds. She settles elegantly on the edge of the bed, crossing one leg over the other, and cocks her head as Clint and Phil still.

It says something about the two of them that they are already used to her interruptions.

“Humans,” she says. “I do not understand you.”

Clint discreetly tugs the sheet up a little, offering a bare minimum of protection. “Well,” he says slowly as Phil sighs in resignation, “when a man and a man love each other very much…”

Natasha grimaces. “Your incessant coitus is not what causes confusion.” There’s a flash of white teeth, there and gone in a second. “I’m well-versed in _that_ sort of physicality.” Phil rubs a hand over his eyes, and Clint slides slowly to his side, tucking the sheets up tighter.

“Well then, why are you in here?”

There’s a sigh, and then Natasha glances up at the ceiling. “Mother help me, but why has my home become a haven for humans?” She stands. “If you could consider rerouting blood away from your penises, there’s a young wizard girl in the foyer. She has a temple dog with her, and a bow, and says she has a solution to your problem with the Erlking’s grudge.”

And with that she’s gone, flicking the doors shut behind her with a snap of her fingers. Clint rolls onto his back and inspects the ceiling. It’s covered with icicles again, which has got to be a safety hazard. “Kate,” he says. “Gotta be Kate.”

“The mysterious Ms. Bishop,” Phil muses, and then hesitates. “Do you want to…”

“Yeah, c’mon,” Clint says, sitting up and finding a pair of pants. He finds that he’s smiling to himself. Kate’s the best. “You should meet her. She’s annoyingly smart. Sticks her nose in everything. Stole my dog.” He finally locates a pair of pants and tugs them on, shrugging in resignation when he realizes belatedly that they’re Phil’s. “She’s great, you’ll love her.”

“You want me to meet her?”

Phil’s sitting propped up on his elbows, his face open and honest. Like he still doesn’t believe that Clint wants him to be there every day for the rest of both their lives. They may have some unresolved problems—Clint’s destructive tendency to jump without looking, Phil’s rocky readjustment to humanity, the perils of making a life together as a pair of long-lived semi-mortals in a magical world that’s largely unfriendly to people like them—but they’re together, and that’s what matters.

“Of course I do,” Clint says, holding out his hand. Phil takes it with a smile. “You’re the most important thing in the world.” Phil’s smile grows, and Clint can’t resist; he tugs Phil in and lays one on him, pressing him back down onto the bed when Phil gives as good as he gets.

They are, of course, interrupted again a moment later when the doors again slam open. Clint sighs. "Aw, door," and sits up, epically frustrated, but then Lucky’s there, bounding on the bed and panting and happy, and Kate’s giving them all a side eye.

“Really,” she says. “Really, with the abs, and the—”

Clint sighs and covers his eyes with his hand. “Kate…”

She snorts. “Yeah, yeah. Keep your shirt on.”

Phil, still naked and looking utterly debauched, snorts in amusement, the giant traitor.

Clint smiles and ducks his head to hide his smile. He’s got friends. He’s got Phil. He’s got—ugh, stars and stones—a giant, overly-enthusiastic dog licking his face.

“Kate Bishop, meet Phil Coulson,” he says, pushing Lucky off the bed. They smile at one another, and in this moment, Clint’s pretty certain that everything’s going to be all right.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ~  
> No plans to write a sequel, but never say never. I left it open on purpose. 
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://eli-rawley.tumblr.com/)!


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